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The  Burden  of  a  Womaii   i 
Elementary  Jane 
Time  and  theWoman 
David  Penstephen  jjj 


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CHRISTOPHER. 

JEZEBEL. 

ELEMENTARY  JANE. 

THE    BURDEN    OF   A   WOMAN. 

TIME   AND   THE    WOMAN. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Boston  and  New  York 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 


BY 


RICHARD    PRYCE 


BOSTON    AND    NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN    COMPANY 


•ry  f}Q  4\  <> 


COPYRIOHT,    I915,    BY    RICHARD   PRTCE 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  November  iqi^ 


— i  rv 


T  %^'a^ 


si 


>.v^ 


THE  FIRST  BOOK  OF 
DAVID 


^ 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

BOOK  THE  FIRST 

CHAPTER  I 

One  of  David's  early  recollections  was  of  being  taken  out 
of  his  warm  bed  in  what  seemed  like  the  middle  of  the 
night,  but  was  really  towards  six  o'clock  of  a  winter's  morn- 
ing, and  dressed  by  cold  candlelight  for  one  of  the  jour- 
neys to  which  he  had  been  accustomed  ever  since  he  was 
born.  Most  of  his  recollections  had  to  do  with  travelling. 
This  one,  more  vivid  somehow  than  the  rest,  stood  out  af- 
terwards from  its  fellows.  He  was  still  half  asleep  when  he 
was  lifted  from  the  warm  pillow,  and,  protesting,  whimper- 
ing even  a  little,  he  tried  to  go  to  sleep  again  during  the 
first  stages  of  his  toilet. 

"Now,  Master  David.  Wake  up.  Wake  up,  will  you? 
Wake  up  like  a  good  boy,  or  are  you  going  to  be  a  naughty 
one?  'Ow  do  you  think  I  'm  to  get  you  dressed  if  you  lollop 
like  that,  to  say  nothing  of  your  little  sister  good  as  gold 
over  there  and  surprised  at  you!  With  the  train  to  catch 
and  all,  do  you  hear  me?  There!  Let's  'elp,  for  goodness 
sake,  'stead  of  'inderin'.  Put  your  arms  in;  now  over  your 
little  head.  That's  right.  Caught  his  poor  fingers,  did  I? 
Careless  old  Betsy!  Ought  to  know  better,  didn't  she? 
There's  a  boy  —  there 's  a  little  man,  though.  And  now  for 
the  wash  wash  wash." 

The  wash  wash  wash  woke  him.  The  water  was  n't 
properly  hot  and  Betsy  was  in  a  hurry.  He  squirmed  and 
wriggled  —  'indering,  it  is  to  be  feared,  very  much  more 
than  he  'elped.  Perhaps  the  water  was  nearly  cold ;  perhaps 
Betsy's  hands,  which  were  kind,  were  rough.  Perhaps  the 


4  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

soap  did  get  into  his  eyes,  as  he  said.  But  he  was  awake 
at  last  and  presently  he  was  dressed. 

He  stood  by  the  table  then  and  watched  Betsy  go 
through  much  the  same  exercises  with  Georgina.  Georgina 
had  the  advantage  of  him,  however,  in  having  been  wide 
awake  by  the  time  her  turn  came.  Georgina  made  no  fuss. 
Presently  two  dressed  children  stood  by  the  table,  and 
watched  Betsy  as,  having  finished  them,  she  proceeded  to 
finish  herself. 

Something  had  happened  the  night  before.  Things  often 
did  happen.  Later,  when  David  was  old  enough  to  observe, 
he  knew  that  there  was  something  connected  with  the  fam- 
ily that  made  '  things'  always  liable  to  happen.  His  father's 
face  would  wear  a  frown  and  his  mother's  an  anxious  but 
unsurprised  look,  and  generally  it  would  not  be  long  before 
they  moved  on  somewhere  else.  Arrivals,  departures,  un- 
packings  and  packings,  trains,  porters,  cloakrooms,  luggage, 
douanes,  omnibuses,  hotels,  hotel  servants,  lodgings,  beds 
with  curtains,  beds  without  curtains,  beds  with  mosquito 
nets,  beds  in  recesses:  these  were  life  and  life  was  these. 
David  aged  seven  took  these  and  took  this  for  granted  — 
for  a  matter  and  for  matters  of  course. 

There  was  himself,  and  there  was  Father  (when  there 
was  Father,  that  is,  for  sometimes  Father  was  not  there), 
and  Mother  (almost  always  Mother),  and  quite  always 
Betsy.  There  was  also  Georgina  —  since  the  arrival  of 
Georgina.  That  was  the  family.  What  there  was  n't, 
though  David  did  not  know  it  yet,  was  a  home.  David's 
mother,  with  the  pale  gentle  face  and  the  tired  eyes,  had 
almost  given  up  hope  that  there  ever  would  be. 

David  had  been  born  at  Calais  of  all  places  —  the  mark 
of  the  bird  of  passage  on  him  for  always.  Some  sand,  a 
Tower,  and  a  Gate.  But  the  painters  have  always  known 
Calais.  And  Calais:  is  it  not  itself  a  Gate?  Most  seemly 
place  for  your  birth,  David.  One  of  the  gates  of  France. 
A  little  Frenchman?  A  certain  rise  in  the  young  days. 
Georgina  was  a  native  of  Florence.    By  the  Calais  argu- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  5 

ment  Georgina  would  be  held  an  Italian.  You  might  thus 
have  brothers  and  sisters  every  one  of  whom  was  of  a  differ- 
ent nationality,  German,  Spanish,  Austrian,  Norwegian  — 
Oriental  even  at  a  stretch.  Which  'like  Euclid'  was  ab- 
surd. You  were,  of  course,  what  your  father  was,  and 
David's  father  was  English.  So  David  the  schoolboy;  be- 
fore he  learned  that,  even  at  the  cost  of  hearing  himself 
called  a  foreigner,  it  was  better,  perhaps,  not  to  speak  of  his 
father  at  all.  Time  enough.  It  was  not  near  his  school- 
days yet.  He  was  still  very  much  in  the  nursery,  where, 
though  strictly  speaking,  it  was  n't  a  nursery,  since  it  was  a 
bedroom  in  a  hotel,  the  most  intimate  and  domestic  things 
happened. 

Betsy's  toilet  was  always  enthralling  —  such  portions 
of  it  as  her  charges  were  permitted  to  see  performed. 
These  consisted  chiefly  in  the  hooking  of  her  stays,  an  or- 
dinance always  put  off  to  the  last  possible  moment  and 
accomplished  to  a  sort  of  suspended  or  sectional  indrawing 
of  the  breath ;  and  perhaps  the  doing  of  Betsy's  hair  — 
a  large  portion  of  which  went  on  ready  done.  Then  came 
Betsy's  dress,  and  behold  Betsy  the  shape  which  she  took 
for  the  day. 

"Doesn't  it  hurt?"  David  asked  this  morning  when 
all  was  done. 

"What  hurt?"  said  Betsy,  patting  her  chignon. 

"  Not  your  hair.  Nor,"  as  she  smoothed  out  her  creases, 
"buttoning  your  dress.  But  when  you  get  the  brass  things 
into  the  eyes.  You  have  to  go  grunt,  grunt,  grunt,  you 
know,  Betsy." 

"Have  to  go  grunt,  grunt,  grunt,"  echoed  Georgina. 

Betsy  knocked  their  heads  together  smiling. 

A  waiter,  not  the  one  that  David  had  made  friends  with 
the  day  before,  came  to  say  that  breakfast  was  ready,  and 
the  three  went  into  the  sitting-room  next  door,  where  the 
children  found  their  mother  and  flew  to  her,  and  where 
their  father  presently  joined  them. 

Nobody  talked  much  after  Mr.  Penstephen  appeared, 


6  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

except  Georgina,  who  from  her  place  beside  Betsy  kept 
up  a  patter  of  baby  prattle. 

"Betsy  goes  grunt,  grunt,  grunt,"  she  announced  k  pro- 
pos  of  nothing;  and  Betsy  said,  "  'Ush,  Miss  Georgy.  Eat 
your  nice  bread  and  milk  like  a  little  lady.  Look  at  Master 
David." 

"Is  the  children's  luggage  ready?"  Mr.  Penstephen 
asked,  breaking  his  own  silence. 

"I've  only  to  fasten  the  straps,  sir." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  had  been  crying,  she  saw.  She,  Betsy, 
had  heard  something  of  what  had  happened. 

"No,  eat  your  own  breakfast,  Betsy,"  Mrs.  Penstephen 
said  gently.  "One  of  the  eggs  is  for  you.  I'll  look  after 
Miss  Georgy  presently  while  you  see  to  the  things.  Yes, 
David,  when  you  've  drunk  your  milk  you  can  have  a  little 
coffee." 

"Grunt,  grunt,  grunt,"  said  Georgina  again. 

Betsy  looked  at  her  master  from  under  her  eyebrows, 
rather  to  see  whether  the  little  girl's  prattle  was  irritating 
him  than  from  any  apprehension  for  what  might  come, 
and  smiled  to  herself. 

But  "That's  what  little  pigs  say,"  Mr.  Penstephen 
said,  running  his  hand  over  his  daughter's  curls. 

How  kind  he  was  really.  How  kind  —  and  him  so 
wrong!  Why  could  n't  he  make  her  mistress  happy?  It 
was  plain  to  see  how  she  suffered.  And  all  for  views  — 
just  views.  Not  sinfulness;  not  deliberate  sinfulness. 
There  was  no  obstacle  —  no  cause  or  impediment.  Just 
views  and  cleverness;  and  look  how  these  things  affected 
those  whom  he  loved!  She  watched  him  with  his  child  — 
his  girl  child;  his  boy  he  did  not  understand  so  well.  Yet 
"Now,  David,  your  coffee  —  and  a  nice  flat  lump  of 
sugar";  he  loved  his  boy  too.  All  for  views  and  cleverness 
—  wrong-headedness  she  called  it.  Wrong-headedness,  ob- 
stinacy.   "I  should  just  like  to  shake  him." 

Her  egg  was  delicious  —  as  good  as  an  English  egg, 
though  it  had  been  laid  by  a  Belgian  hen.   She  had  been 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  7 

up  since  before  five  o'clock  packing,  and  was  hungry. 

Betsy  enjoyed  her  breakfast. 

^    "Now  'm.  A  quarter  of  an  hour  will  see  us  ready." 

Georgina  had  finished  her  breakfast,  David  his;  so  she 
took  the  children  with  her,  while  her  mistress  went  to 
put  on  her  hat  and  coat,  and  her  master  to  pay  the  bill. 

There  were  no  cheerful  leave-takings  in  that  hotel.  No 
au  revoirs  from  bowing  officials  and  servants.  Even  the 
waiter  whom  David  had  made  friends  with  kept  out  of  the 
way.  But  to  David's  delight,  at  the  very  moment  when 
his  father  was  saying,  "We  never  set  foot  there  again," 
David  espied  him  looking  out  from  behind  one  of  the  blinds 
in  the  coffee-room,  and  received  a  deprecating  wave  of  the 
hand  from  him  which  he  longed  to  but  dared  not  return.  The 
Penstephens  were  leaving  Brussels  in  gravest  displeasure. 

Then  came  the  usual  journey.  But  every  journey  was 
a  new  adventure  to  the  funny  little  boy  in  the  Scotch 
cap,  the  knickerbocker  suit,  the  knitted  comforter,  and 
the  pilot's-cloth  great-coat.  Children  were  oddly  dressed 
in  those  days  —  but  so  was  every  one  else.  David's  fa- 
ther, for  instance,  wore  a  black  coat  and  check  trousers 
travelling,  and  changed  his  rather  square  felt  hat  in  the 
train  for  a  cap  which  had  been  bought  at  a  bookstall.  His 
mother  wore  what  was  known  as  a  "polonaise,"  a  round 
sealskin  jacket,  and  a  hat  which  sloped  up  towards  the 
back  from  her  forehead;  a  string  of  onyx  beads  as  large 
as  marbles  round  her  neck;  and  carried  her  watch  in  a 
watch-pocket.  Betsy  wore  .  .  .  but,  goodness,  what  did 
not  Betsy?  —  who  was  the  shape,  moreover,  if  not  quite 
the  size,  of  a  pillar  box!  Yet  the  family  looked  distin- 
guished. People,  pointing  them  out  or  asking  perhaps  who 
they  were,  said,  "Those  nice-looking  people,"  —  till  they 
were  -  old,  when  they  left  out  'nice-looking'  at  once  and 
put  worlds  of  meaning  into  what  remained.  Those  peo- 
ple! Those.  Betsy  was  thus  the  imposing  servitor  of  the 
distinguished,  or  the  damaged  hanger-on  of  the  damaged, 
and  both,  in  less  time  than  it  takes  to  say  so. 


8  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

David  kneeling  on  the  seat  looked  out  of  the  window 
—  not  the  big  square  window  of  these  days,  but  a  pane 
shaped  like  the  lower  half  of  a  moon  in  its  second  quarter. 
Dusty  blue  curtains,  hung  on  ivory  rings,  had  to  be  pushed 
back  from  time  to  time. 

"What  are  you  looking  at,  David?" 

He  was  so  intent  that  his  mother  had  to  repeat  her 
question. 

"What  do  you  see  out  there?" 

He  started  and  turned  back  to  the  inside  of  the  com- 
partment. 

"The  telegraph  wires." 

Then  David's  mother  watched  them  too.  They  dipped, 
down,  down.  Now  they  were  going  up.  They  seemed  to  be 
engaged  in  a  struggle  to  rise.  Up.  Up.  They  were  going 
up.  They  would  go  surely  right  up  to  where  they  would  be 
safe.  When  they  seemed  nearest  to  the  attainment  of  their 
wish,  a  pole  suddenly,  and  down  they  would  come  again 
with  a  rush !  It  was  as  if  they  could  not  escape?  —  evade? 
They  were  like  many  things,  but  mostly  things  hunted  or 
trapped:  hunted  things  seeking  covert  and  overtaken  at 
the  brink  of  safety;  hunted  people  —  slaves,  say  —  making 
for  sanctuary,  detected,  caught  or  shot  down;  flies  that 
nearly  succeeded  in  disentangling  themselves  from  webs; 
men  trying  to  rise  —  perhaps  on  '  stepping-stones  of  their 
dead  selves  to  higher  things,'  but  always,  always  dragged 
down;  creatures  swimming  for  dear  life  ever  to  be  washed 
back  with  the  wave  that  had  brought  them  almost  to  the 
shore. 

"Germany  next,  David.     How  shall  you  like  that?" 

"Groschen,"  said  David  who  had  been  there  and  knew. 

"Kreuzers,"  said  his  father.  "More  in  your  line,  my 
son." 

"Koitzers,"  echoed  Georgina. 

"Marks,"  said  David  stoutly. 

"Marks,"  said  Georgina. 

"I  once  had  a  florin,"  said  David. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  9 

They  had  the  compartment  to  themselves.  The  racks 
were  full  of  their  luggage:  valises,  the  carpetbag,  the 
hold-all,  'straps,'  a  square  box  in  a  brown  holland  cover 
bound  with  red  tape :  the  odd  hand-luggage  of  the  sixties 
and  seventies  —  a  dressing-case  (Mother's)  with  tortoise- 
shell  fittings  inside  it,  including  a  comb  with  a  tail ;  another 
dressing-case  (Father's)  with  silver  fittings  and  a  secret 
drawer;  the  Dispatch  Box  (also  Father's);  some  toys;  a 
watering-can  put  to  strange  uses;  The  Shawl  (a  large  plaid 
square  capable  of  enveloping  both  children)  and  some  rugs. 
Mrs.  Penstephen  was  wrong  if  she  thought  that  her  chil- 
dren had  no  home. 

What  a  domestic  scene  they  and  these  must  have  pre- 
sented, David  often  thought  when  he  looked  back  to  the 
young  years  of  the  travelling!  The  intimate,  familiar 
things  which  accompanied  them  made  the  railway  carriage 
an  intimate,  familiar  place  —  fit  setting  for  the  family 
group.  Father,  mother,  son,  daughter,  with  Betsy  servant 
and  friend. 

All  the  odd  luggage,  even  to  the  corded  trunks  in  the 
luggage  van,  had  the  tender  value  in  retrospect  of  things 
loved  and  lost.  No  household  gods,  no  chairs  or  tables 
or  sofas  or  cupboards  or  chests-of-drawers  or  book-cases 
or  pictures,  were  ever  more  closely  connected  with  a  life 
than,  say,  the  holland-covered  box  with  David's.  He  had 
lived  his  seven  years  to  the  sight  of  it.  It  was  as  much 
a  part  of  his  mother  as  the  rings  on  her  fingers,  and  it  was 
thus  somehow  a  very  part  of  him. 

And  how  respectable!  Respectability  must  have  been 
the  dominant  note  of  that  assemblage  of  persons  and  things. 
An  English  gentleman  of  good  position  and  sufficient 
means,  an  English  lady  of  delicate  and  'refined'  appear- 
ance, their  well-bred  presentable  children,  their  children's 
elderly  comfortable  nurse:  the  valises,  carpetbag,  hold-all, 
dressing-cases,  straps,  etc.,  etc.  Could  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Grundy  themselves  with  family  and  luggage  have  shown 
more  blameless  a  front?  ' 


10  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Now  came  the  guard  to  look  at  the  tickets,  climbing 
dangerously  along  the  footboard  outside  the  carriages,  and, 
the  window  having  been  let  down,  putting  his  head  and 
shoulders  in  at  the  aperture. 

"Ze  tickets." 

"Father  can  speak  French,"  David  kad  to  say,  and 
wanted  to  add,  "Even  I  can." 

"Les  billets,  alors,  Monsieur,"  said  the  guard,  bowing  to 
David  who  fetched  them  from  his  father,  and  handed  them 
one  by  one  —  three  wholes  and  two  halves  as  he  pointed 
out  —  to  the  guard  who  proceeded  to  clip  them.  Georgina 
on  Betsy's  knee  had  to  be  held  up  to  see  too. 

A  domestic  scene.  All  that  there  was  of  most  domestic 
and  respectable. 


CHAPTER  II 

Something  had,  indeed,  happened  at  the  hotel  in  Brussels 

—  the  sort  of  thing  that  had  always  been  liable  to  happen, 
only  somehow  rather  more  dreadful  than  ever  had  happened 
before.    Aloofness  was  the  most  that  happened  generally 

—  aloofness  covering  coldness,  recedings,  withdrawals,  and 
the  usual  starings  or  blindnesses.  People  saw  the  Penste- 
phens  only  too  well,  or  did  not  see  them  at  all.  They  made 
friendly  overtures  —  to  the  children,  perhaps,  the  strange 
little  ruminant  David,  or  the  engaging  Georgina  —  and, 
inexplicably,  or  anyway  unexplainedly,  retreated.  David 
deep  down  in  his  soul  had  always  known.  Georgina,  too 
young,  and  also  too  content,  to  be  perceptive,  did  not 
know.  But  this  time  things  had  gone  further. 

Some  one  —  a  great  lady,  an  old  client,  the  kind  that 
bowing  hotel  managers  dare  not  or  will  not  offend  —  had 
given  her  ultimatum.   "Either  those  people  or  I." 

The  scraping  manager  was  to  take  his  choice.  It  had  of 
course  to  be  Those  People.  Madame,  with  her  companion 
who  was  almost  her  lady-in-waiting,  her  secretary,  her 
maids  (two)  and  her  courier,  had  a  suite  upon  the  first 
floor.  Her  ultimatum,  since  she  breakfasted,  lunched,  and 
dined  in  her  own  apartments,  and  need,  and  would,  it  is 
probable,  have  seen  as  little  of  the  persons  who  outraged 
her  as  if  continents  instead  of  stairs  and  corridors  had 
separated  her  from  them,  was  preposterous  —  a  piece  of 
self-righteous  despotism.  But  she  had  spoken.  They  or  she. 
The  matter,  the  hotel  manager  gathered,  had  something 
to  do  with  the  roof.  Madame,  representing  outraged  virtue, 
and  they,  open  scandal,  could  not,  it  seemed,  sleep  under 
the  same  slates. 

"If  I  put  them  in  the  D^pendance?  A  separate  en- 
trance as  Madame  knows.  Only  the  public  salons.  I  go  to 


12  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Monsieur.  I  say,  *  Your  rooms  un'appily  we  find  engaged. 
A  mistake  most  regrettable.  An  erreur.  But  in  the  D6- 
pendance  .  .  .'" 

Madame  felt  her  bracelets  —  slabs  of  jet  upon  parallel 
strings  of  elastic;  the  centre  slab  on  each  wrist  showing,  if 
you  please,  a  coronet  in  diamonds  —  and  was  silent.  She 
had  spoken. 

"Oh,  pardon,  miladi.  It  shall  be  as  Madame  wishes. 
But  of  course.  I  go  to  Monsieur  without  delay.  The  rooms 
engaged;  the  D6pendance  un'appily  quite  full,  ^a  s'ar- 
rangera." 

Her  great-ladyship  bowed. 

"The  gentleman  will  understand,  I  think,"  she  said 
grimly.  "But  I  give  you  full  permission  to  mention  my 
name." 

The  companion,  who  scraped  nearly  as  much  as  the 
manager,  said,  "  I  think  you  're  quite  right,"  as  soon  as  the 
manager  had  scraped  himself  out  of  the  room.  "Quite, 
quite  right." 

"Of  course  I'm  right." 

"Yes,  that's  what  I  say,  dear." 

"Of  course  it's  what  you  say." 

"Well,  I  only— " 

"Yes,  dear,  I  know." 

We  leave  these  ladies  agreeing  with  each  other. 

The  manager's  part  was  more  difficult.  He  had  'agreed,' 
to  be  sure,  but  in  a  different  sense,  and  he  wished  himself 
well  through  a  bad  quarter  of  an  hour.  These  old  women 
were  monsters.  As  well  hope  to  reason  with  basilisks.  He 
did  not  suppose  that  the  '  un'appily  engaged '  would  work 
with  Mr.  Penstephen.  He  did  not  see  himself  saying  that 
the  Dcpendance  was  full  either.  He  did  not,  for  that  matter, 
see  the  Dependance  entering  at  all  into  the  question.  Scrap- 
ing might  do  the  thing.  There  was,  of  course,  always 
insolence  to  fall  back  upon.  But  he  did  not  somehow 
see  himself,  or  indeed  any  one  else,  being  insolent  to  Mr. 
Penstephen. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  13 

The  old  woman  had  said  that  he  might  mention  her 
name.    So  be  it. 

He  nerved  himself  to  what  might  be  before  him. 

Mr.  Penstephen  spoke  as  little  as  the  basilisk.  He  heard 
M.  Quarantier  out.  He  did  not  speak,  indeed,  for  some 
moments  after  M.  Quarantier  had  told  what  he  had  to  tell, 
but  this  does  not  mean  till  after  M.  Quarantier  had  finished 
speaking.  M.  Quarantier  did  not  seem  able  to  finish  speak- 
ing. He  could  have  stopped  excusing  himself  if  his  guest 
would  only  interrupt  him.  He  heard  himself  going  over  the 
ground  again  and  again.  He  did  not  speak  for  himself, 
Monsieur  would  see.  He  was,  Monsieur  knew,  the  serv- 
ant of  the  company  owning  the  hotel.  He  was  helpless. 
Madame  la  comtesse  —  the  Countess  of  Harbington,  a 
great  English  lady  with  estates  he  understood  in  the  islands 
of  Ireland  and  Wight  (Monsieur  doubtless  would  know)  — 
came  every  year.  But  every  single  year.  It  would  not  do 
to  offend  —  but  would  not  do.  These  great  ladies.  Mon- 
sieur knew.  He,  the  hotel  manager,  was  by  example  with- 
out prejudices.  One  arrived,  one  stayed,  one  paid  one's 
bill.  One  —  the  hotel  now  —  asked  no  questions.  Where 
would  a  hotel  be  asking  questions?  Ah,  he  should  think  so, 
there  were  whom  one  could  not  receive.  Oh,  by  example. 
But  these  one  knew  at  a  glance.  They  asked  the  best  rooms, 
too,  these  sometimes;  so  money  was  nothing  to  go  by.  But 
Monsieur,  Madame,  and  the  little  ones,  so  distinguished, 
so  well  placed,  so  amiable.  All  that  there  was  of  most 
desirable.  He  would  only  ask  Monsieur  to  think  of  him 
as  one  who  performed  a  duty  —  a  duty  most  unreason- 
able, most  uncalled  for,  against  his  inclination,  his  will. 

"For  me  I  ask  no  better  patrons.  But  what  can  I,  me? 
I  throw  myself  upon  the  goodness,  the  generosity,  the  kind 
discretion  of  Monsieur  ..." 

Still  Mr.  Penstephen  did  not  speak.  A  calm,  attentive 
eye  rested  on  the  scraper.  He  seemed,  indeed,  to  be  listen- 
ing with  his  eyes.  M.  Quarantier,  generally  so  bland,  so 
complacent,  felt  as  if  he  were  being  slowly  taken  to  pieces. 


14  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

It  was  then  that  he  made  his  mistake.  Constrained  to  go 
on  speaking,  constrained  by  Mr.  Penstephen's  very  silence, 
he  was  unwise  enough  to  recommend  another  hotel. 

"In  this  town?" 

In  the  rue  So-and-So.  Monsieur  would  find  it  very  com- 
fortable. When  the  hotel  was  full  they  often  sent  on  their 
patrons  there.  If  Monsieur  would  permit,  a  note  very 
express  should  be  sent  round  — 

The  storm  broke.  The  rest  was  another  sort  of  silence 
altogether  —  the  silence  in  which  the  family  left  the  next 
morning.  Mr,  Penstephen  never  'set  foot'  again  in  Brus- 
sels. Mrs.  Penstephen,  more  forgiving,  perhaps,  more 
understanding  certainly,  did  in  after  years;  but  not  till 
enough  water  had  flowed  under  the  bridges  to  wash  to 
faintness  the  recollection  of  her  tears  and  her  humiliation. 

The  frown  gradually  left  Mr.  Penstephen's  face.  David 
did  not  observe  this,  but  he  was  conscious  of  a  lightening 
or  a  brightening  generally.  It  was  as  when  a  lamp  which 
has  been  burning,  but  burning  dully,  is  turned  up.  Betsy 
became  more  cheerful.  She  talked  to  the  children  and 
might  have  been  supposed  to  be  inviting  some  one  whose 
face  did  not  at  once  change  to  be  of  good  cheer.  She  painted 
the  joys  of  nice  lodgings  after  hotels —  they  were  going  to 
lodgings;  the  teasyoucouldhave  with  thehelpof  anatna; 
real  English  tea  which  you  made  yourself;  pots  of  jam; 
bought  cakes  —  none  of  your  hotel  pastry.  No  foreign  hotel 
understood  tea.  Oh,  yes,  you  could  have  tea  —  T.  H.  E.  — 
such  a  way  to  spell  it!  No  wonder  it  did  n't  taste  right!  — 
but  when  you  had  tried  it  a  time  or  two  you  always  fell  back 
upon  coffee,  which  she  granted  you  they  could  make.  That 
showed  pretty  well  what  their  tea  was  like.  David  was 
just  to  think.  You  brought  the  water  in  the  setna  up  to  a 
boil,  put  your  tea  in  the  teapot  (having  warmed  that), 
poured  in  the  boiling  water  which  went  in  with  oh,  such  a 
gurgle;  let  stand  for  a  minute  or  two,  and  there  you  were. 
Betsy  thought  the  sound  of  water  being  poured  into  a  tea- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  15 

pot  (earthenware  for  choice  —  or,  of  course,  silver,  but 
never  'metal'  nor  anything  Hke  that)  from,  if  possible,  a 
black  kitchen  kettle,  polished  but  with  just  a  belt  of  soot 
on  it,  the  most  musical  sound  in  the  world. 

"  I  know  it,"  said  David.  "  It 's  right  down  in  the  teapot's 
stomach," 

"Say  heart,  dear." 

It  was  Mrs.  Penstephen.  She  was  listening,  then?  There 
was  a  smile  on  her  lips  as  she  spoke. 

"Have  teapots  hearts?"  asked  David, 

"Have  little  boys  stomachs!"  said  Betsy.  "And  nice 
bread-and-butter  cut  from  the  loaf.  To  be  sure  that's  tar- 
teens,  but  tar-teens  always  did  seem  to  me  to  go  better 
with  coffee,  and  it's  tea  we're  talking  about.  I'll  make 
such  tea  in  the  lodgings!  You'll  all  be  glad  to  be  done 
with  hotels  for  a  little.   I  '11  make  such  tea." 

"You  make  me  want  to  arrive,"  said  David's  mother. 
"No,  we  don't  get  tea  like  yours,  Betsy,  in  hotels." 

"It's  all  the  boil  of  the  water,"  said  Betsy. 

She  had  diverted  her  mistress's  thoughts  from  what 
occupied  them,  and  that  was  what  she  wanted. 

The  talk  of  the  tea,  moreover,  had  made  them  all  hungry, 
and  it  was  really  nearly  time  for  luncheon  —  quite  nearly 
enough,  anyway,  after  their  early  start,  to  make  them  all 
welcome  the  thought  of  it.  Mr.  Penstephen  got  down  the 
square  box,  and  its  cover  was  loosened  just  sufficiently  to 
allow  the  lid  to  be  raised.  Betsy  became  an  upright  pillar 
box  at  once,  and  having  deposited  Georgina  upon  the  seat 
by  her  mother,  helped  to  make  ready.  The  cold  chicken 
which  she  had  been  out  to  buy  the  night  before  was  ready 
carved.  The  pulling  of  a  pink  riband  released  wings,  slices 
of  the  breast,  thigh  bones,  drumsticks.  There  were  but- 
tered rolls;  pinches  of  salt  in  paper.  There  was  a  bottle  of 
wine  for  the  elders  (Betsy  bidden  to  share  it),  a  bottle  of 
milk  for  the  children.  There  were  little  tartlets  —  a  sponge 
cake,  or  the  Belgian  equivalent  of  a  sponge  cake,  for  Geor- 
gina —  and  there  were  some  grapes.    No  restaurant  cars 


i6  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

then,  no  organised  system  of  luncheon  baskets.  The  tray 
of  the  holland-covered  box  represented  what  had  not  then 
been  invented. 

Everybody  felt  better  for  having  eaten  —  even  Mrs. 
Penstephen,  Betsy  knew.  Betsy  was  wonderful.  Her 
bosom  was  a  haven  of  shelter  and  comfort  for  more  than 
the  heads  of  children.  In  the  spirit  her  mistress's  head  had 
lain  there  and  been  pressed  there  often  and  often  to  the 
binding-up  of  the  bruised  heart.  Once  it  had  actually  been 
held  there,  and  neither  ever  forgot.  That  marked  a  crisis. 

Mrs.  Penstephen,  watching  her  as  she  cleaned  up  and 
tidied  and  put  away,  thought  of  that  now.  Her  movements 
were  extraordinarily  deft.  How  neatly  everything  fitted 
back  into  its  place.  She  never  seemed  to  hurry  and  yet  was 
so  quick.  There,  all  was  stowed  away  again.  No  fear  that 
the  lid  would  not  close  down  under,  or  rather  over,  Betsy's 
skilful  packing.  Now  she  was  turning  the  key  in  the  lock; 
now  readjusting  the  holland  cover;  now  with  a  strong 
hoist  swinging  the  box  —  which  held  other  things  below 
the  tray  and  was  heavy  —  up  into  the  rack  again ;  and  now, 
all  signs  of  the  recent  meal  removed,  perching  Georgina 
again  on  to  the  place  where  her  lap  would  have  been  if  she 
had  had  a  lap,  and  settling  down  once  more  as  the  children's 
nurse. 

She  caught  her  mistress's  eye  fixed  upon  her  and  smiled. 

"I  should  n't  be  surprised  but  what  we  did  n't  some  of 
us  drop  off  before  very  long." 

Georgina  dropped  first  —  but  not  off  her  perch.  David 
next,  his  head  against  his  mother's  warm  sealskin.  Then 
Mr.  Penstephen  in  his  corner,  his  long  legs  stretched  out 
under  his  rug.  But  neither  Betsy  slept,  her  arms  clasped 
round  the  sleeping  Georgina,  nor  Mrs.  Penstephen,  who 
took  David's  hand  into  her  muff. 

"Betsy,  it  was  dreadful." 

The  words  came  of  the  memory  and  the  meeting  of  the 
eyes. 

"Oh,  'm,  don't  think  of  it.   And  we  shall  be  so  much 


DAVID   PENSTEPHEN  17 

*appier  in  lodgings.  I  believe  myself  we  always  should  be. 
Hotels  are  all  very  well,  but  there's  the  people  and  one 
thing  and  the  other,  and  I  'm  sure,  though  trouble  's  saved 
for  you,  what  with  the  housekeeping  done  for  you,  and  the 
service  and  so  on,  I  don't  in  me  own  mind  privately  think 
—  not  meself ,  that  is  —  that  it  makes  up  for  not  having  a 
place  of  your  own,  so  to  speak.  Lodgings,  now,  or  —  how 
would  it  be  —  a  nice  —  well,  a  nice  furnished  house?" 

"  I  've  thought  of  that.  I  've  often  thought  of  that.  But 
again  there  would  be  difficulties.  It  might  not  be  every  one 
who  would  care  to  let  to  us." 

"Show  such  your  banker's  reference,  'm.  Let  'em  see  the 
colour  of  money.  One  gold-piece  is  as  good  as  another  all 
the  world  over." 

"Our  gold-pieces  don't  seem  to  have  counted  for  much 
where  we've  come  from  to-day,"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen. 

"Ah,  hotels,"  said  Betsy.   "People  —  'erded  up  Hke." 

"Not  much  herding.  She  had  her  own  suite  of  rooms, 
I'm  told.   No,  there  would  be  difficulties." 

"Abroad,  do  you  think,  'm?  Or,  come  to  that,  at  home. 
London.  Think  how  big  it  is.  Why,  you  can  get  lost  in  it. 
There's  whole  districts.  Beautiful  houses  where  nobody 
lives  that  you  and  the  Master 'd  be  likely  to  know.  Big 
houses,  too.  With  gardens.  Or  there's  small  country 
places." 

"The  country  would  n't  do.  The  country  would  be  quite 
out  of  the  question.  The  country  —  just  think." 

Betsy  just  thought. 

People  calling  and  not  calling.  True.  Difficult  to  say 
which  would  be  worse.  No,  the  country,  she  supposed, 
would  not  do. 

But  London  —  some  nice  unfashionable  quarter.  Why, 
in  London,  even  in  good  neighbourhoods,  you  did  n't  know 
the  name  sometimes  of  people  who  lived  next  door  to  you, 
and  as  to  people  in  the  next  street  —  why,  you  did  n't 
know  them  so  much  as  by  sight. 

But  Mrs.  Penstephen  shook  her  head.  Dreamsi  Dreams ! 


i8  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Dreams  were  not  for  her.  It  was  no  good  thinking  of 
London.   It  could  n't  be  England  at  all. 

David  stirred  in  his  sleep.  She  settled  his  head  more 
comfortably  against  her  sealskin.  Betsy,  leaning  forward 
without  dislodging  Georgina,  pulled  the  rug  up  about  her 
and  the  slumbering  boy. 

Neither  spoke  for  a  few  minutes  after  that.  The  train 
swung  on  with  its  even  unevenness.  Outside  the  telegraph 
wires  rose  and  dipped  unheeded. 

Betsy  said,  "Would  n't  you  try  to  sleep,  'm,  a  little? 
You  've  hours  to  make  up.  Let  me  have  Master  David  here 
by  me.   He'd  be  off  again  in  a  minute." 

But  Mrs.  Penstephen  was  not  sleepy.  She  had  even  slept 
in  the  night,  she  said.  It  was  poor  Betsy  who  had  the  hours 
to  make  up.  She  must  have  spent  one  half  of  the  night 
packing,  and  the  other  half  — 

"There  can't  have  been  much  other  half.  It  must  have 
been  time  to  get  up  almost  as  soon  as  you  got  to  bed." 

"Oh,  bless  you,  'm,  I  don't  mind.  Went  to  me  heart, 
though,  to  wake  Master  David.  That  boy '11  always  have 
one  comfort  through  life.  He  '11  be  able  to  sleep  away  his 
troubles.  There's  an  endowment  for  anybody.  There's  a 
—  what  shall  I  call  it?  —  equipment.  That's  it.  As  good 
as  a  armour.  Like  taking  a  refuge  about  with  you.  Some- 
thing to  creep  into  and  lie  snug  in  till  the  storm's  past." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  looked  at  her  sleeping  son.  The  shadow 
had  not  fallen  upon  him  yet,  or  if  it  had,  he  could  not  be 
conscious  of  it.  But  it  must  fall  upon  him.  Let  him  sleep. 
He  would  need  equipment;  armours,  refuges. 

Betsy  guessed  what  her  mistress  was  thinking.  It  sent 
her  own  thoughts  back  to  the  events  of  the  last  twenty- 
four  hours. 

"The  hotel  behaved  disgraceful,"  she  said  suddenly. 
"  I  'd  like  to  have  given  them  me  mind  —  in  pieces.  All  of 
them.  The  manager  should  have  been  ashamed.  Such  a 
way  to  treat  people.   He  should  have  known  better." 

"He  could  n't  help  himself,"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen.  "I 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  19 

think  he  was  really  distressed.  I  did  n't  see  him.  But  I  am 
quite  sure." 

"She,  then,"  said  Betsy.  "She  could  help  herself.  So 
onchristian.  I  'd  've  saved  the  pieces  of  me  mind  for  her. 
I  'd  've  let  her  have  them.  Taking  upon  herself  to  dictate. 
And  her  with  rouge  on  her  cheeks  —  as  I  saw  myself  with 
me  own  eyes.  Two  ladies'  maids,  too,  if  you  please.  One  to 
do  one  cheek  and  one  to  do  the  other,  I  suppose." 

"Betsy!"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen. 

"  Yes,  'm,  disrespectful  I  know.  I  'm  forgetting  meself ,  I 
dare  say,  but  it  makes  me  blood  boil.  Lady,  indeed!  Al- 
though with  maids  and  seckertry  and  companion!  The 
companion  looked  a  poor  put-upon  thing,  I  can  tell  you  — 
for  all  she  said  '  Dear '  to  her  ladyship  as  they  got  out  of  the 
carriage.  Some  poor  relation,  no  doubt." 

"Betsy,"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen.  "Betsy,  you  must  n't. 
I  can't  allow  you." 

"No,  'm,  I  know,"  said  Betsy. 

She  was  silent  for  a  moment  or  two. 

"Clergy  I  could  understand,"  she  said  then.  "Might 
think  it  their  duty  —  even  if  mistaken.  But  for  her  to  sit 
up  in  judgment,  just  because  she  happens  to  have  a  handle 
to  her  name  (though  only,  I  suppose,  through  her  husband) 
and  a  suite  of  apartments  to  keep  it  in,  makes  me  ill.  Yes, 
'm,  when  I  think  of  it  you  must  let  me  forget  meself." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  smiled. 

"We  mustn't  be  uncharitable,"  she  said.  "She  was 
right,  perhaps,  —  right  from  her  point  of  view,  I  mean." 

"Did  we  contaminate  the  air,  'm?"  Betsy  always  as- 
sociated herself  with  the  family.  "Did  we  poison  it  so  that 
people  in  private  suites  even  could  n't  trust  themselves  to 
breathe  it?  We  might  have  been  criminals.  We  might 
have  been  dangerous  characters.  We  might  have  been  in- 
fectious. Oh,  no,  'm,  I  haven't  common  patience." 

So  Betsy  argued  and  yet  Betsy  deplored.  She  would 
fight  tooth  and  nail,  but  no  one  deplored  more  than  Betsy. 


CHAPTER   III 

Frau  Finkel's  apartments  happily  were  vacant.  Mr. 
Penstephen  had  telegraphed,  but  there  had  been  no  time 
for  an  answer,  and  the  family  arrived  at  the  house  in  Hein- 
rich-Strasse  uncertain  whether  they  could  be  taken  in  or 
whether  they  must  seek  other  lodging.  Frau  Finkel  re- 
ceived them  with  open  arms.  She  had  their  old  rooms  for 
them.  Aired?  They  had  only  ceased  to  be  occupied  the 
week  before  —  a  Russian  family,  very  highly  placed;  the 
beds  had  been  before  the  fire  all  day.  The  stoves  were 
lighted,  the  rooms  warm,  everj^thing  ready.  And  was  this 
the  young  Herr  David?  So  grown.  So  tall.  So  like  his 
noble  father.  And  this  the  baby  of  two  years  ago?  So 
wonder-beautiful.  So  like  her  gracious  mother  (which 
Georgina  wasn't  particularly).  And  Fraulein  Betsee. 
Ach's  and  So's  and  adverbs  and  adjectives  and  pent-up 
verbs  filled  the  passage. 

Mr.  Penstephen  said,  "Yes,  yes,  yes,"  in  a  tone  of  good- 
natured  impatience. 

But  the  good  woman's  welcome  was  grateful  to  every  one. 
Smiling  servants  relieved  arms  and  hands  of  rugs  and  bag- 
gage. David  yielded  up  The  Shawl  and  the  bundle  of  toys 
to  some  one  called  Anna,  and  some  one  else  called  Gretchen 
relieved  Betsy  of  the  holland-covered  box.  Frau  Finkel, 
talking  still  and  carrying  both  the  dressing-cases,  led  the 
way  up. 

High  rooms,  painted  ceilings,  china  stoves:  these  Da- 
vid's dominant  impressions.  He  remembered  these  things 
vaguely  from  his  last  visit,  but  saw  them  now  freshly.  The 
woodwork  which  he  did  not  notice  was  painted  to  resemble 
other  wood  —  perhaps  even  itself.  There  were  huge  look- 
ing-glasses. The  furniture,  which  was  old  and  rather  hand- 
some, was  upholstered  in  faded  brocade.  There  were  loose 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  21 

covers  over  this  on  some  of  the  chairs.  David  recognised 
the  chair  which  he  had  broken.  It  was  still  broken.  He 
pointed  it  out  to  his  mother. 

"Do  you  remember  that,  darling?" 

"  I  knocked  it  down  and  a  piece  came  off.  Father  said  I 
was  n't  to  tip  up  my  chair  because  it  would  fall  if  I  did,  and 
I  just  wanted  to  see,  and  I  tipped  it  once  just  the  least  little 
bit  further  and  it  did.  Of  course  I  did  n't  mean  to  —  at 
least  I  did  n't  mean  it  to." 

"Your  father  was  right,  you  see." 

"Fathers  always  are,  are  n't  they?" 

"Always,"  said  David's  mother;  but  as  Mrs.  Penstephen 
she  was  n't  sure. 

"He  had  to  pay  for  it,  had  n't  you,  Father?" 

"When  things  are  broken,"  said  David's  father,  "they 
generally  have  to  be  paid  for." 

David  gave  his  funny  little  laugh. 

"It's  the  fathers  that  have  to  pay." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  was  thinking  that  it  was  sometimes  the 
mothers.  But  that  would  not  matter  if  it  were  not  that  it 
was  also  sometimes  the  children.  She  looked  at  the  broken 
chair. 

"Fancy  your  remembering,"  was  what  she  said. 

"But  I  remember  everything,"  said  David. 

He  was  full  of  excitement.  The  luggage  was  bumping  its 
way  up  to  the  bedrooms.  He  ran  out  of  the  room  to  see  it 
pass.  Frau  Finkel  stood  guard  over  her  wall-papers  and 
her  banisters,  and  gave  voluble  directions,  or  wrinkled  her 
forehead  when  the  stairs  creaked  under  the  weight  of  the 
trunks,  or  scratches  to  paint  or  plaster  seemed  imminent. 
The  women  servants  giggled  from  time  to  time  —  when  a 
corner  was  difficult  to  negotiate  or  a  chandelier  was  in 
danger.  Women  carrying  a  heavy  trunk  always  giggled, 
David  in  the  course  of  his  travels  had  long  since  observed. 
An  awkward  turn  in  the  stairs  or  a  moment  of  jeopardy  was 
always  enough  to  send  them  into  laughing  hysterics.  One 
generally  pushed  a  little  too  much  or  the  other  perhaps 


22  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

pulled.  Men  porters,  the  'boots'  in  hotels,  flymen,  and  the 
like  —  never  found  weight-lifting  so  exhilarating.  Why 
was  it? 

He  asked  Frau  Finkel  in  German,  and  she  answered  him 
in  English. 

Because  girls  were  great  sillies  she  said.  Oh,  so  sillies. 
Look  at  Anna  now,  laughing  because  she  had  nearly  carried 
away  de  door-post,  and  Gretchen  too  in  sympatee. 

"Dey  tink  of  deir  own  silliness,  not  of  my  vails,  not  of 
de  chentleman's  and  de  ladies'  tronks.  I  tell  dem  vait! 
Vait  till  dey  have  houses  of  deir  own  if  ever.  Vait  till  dey 
have  so  much  as  a  tronk.  Den  dey  see.  Den  perhaps  dey 
laugh  on  de  oder  site.  Just  sillinesses  like  I  tell  you." 

Oh,  that  was  it?  David  thought  he  rather  liked  silli- 
nesses. 

Anna  and  Gretchen  were  taking  a  momentary  rest  on 
the  landing.  They  had  not  stopped  laughing.  Anna  had 
blue  earrings  and  a  striped  'Garibaldi'  and,  as  she  sat  on 
the  trunk,  very  fat  legs.  Her  hair  was  in  a  net.  Gretchen 
had,  chiefly,  a  broad  face  with  little  screwed-up  eyes  set 
very  far  apart,  and  a  mouth  with  small  white  teeth  in  it. 
She  had  some  pins  and  a  needle  or  two  —  one  of  the  needles 
threaded  —  stuck  into  the  bosom  of  her  dress.  Her  hair, 
of  which  she  seemed  to  have  a  great  quantity,  was  done  in 
plaits  bound  closely  round  her  head. 

"Na  —  now,"  said  Frau  Finkel,  speaking  to  the  girls  in 
English  for  the  benefit  it  is  to  be  supposed  of  David,  "  Na — 
now  ve  finish.  No  more  restings.  No  more  sillinesses. 
Forvarts!" 

But  as  the  girls  lifted  the  trunk  and  became  conscious 
once  more  of  the  strain  on  their  muscles  they  had  to  laugh. 

David  clapped  his  hands,  hopped  on  one  leg,  and  looked 
at  Frau  Finkel. 

"Anna,  vill  you  attention!  I  am  ashamed  of  you.  Such 
laughings  not  seemly.  De  young  chentleman  tink  I  have 
noting  but  sillies  for  servants.  Gretchen,  you  drop  de  ent 
if  you  pay  not  carefulness.  And  vearing  still  your  timble ! 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  33 

Vas  ever!  Vy  dee  n  't  you  take  it  off,  foolish?  How  can  you 
hold  tight  mit  a  timble  on  de  finger.  Na  —  now,  vonce 
more  again,  attention!" 

The  bumping  proceeded.  To  David's  delight  Anna,  who 
mounted  the  stairs  backwards,  sat  suddenly.  Even  Betsy, 
who  came  out  of  one  of  the  bedrooms  at  that  moment,  had 
to  laugh. 

"We  like  lodgings  better  than  hotels,  don't  we,  Master 
David?" 

"  I  should  think  we  did,"  said  David. 

Frau  Finkel  said,  "Please  excuse,  Fraulein  Betsee." 

"Oh,  we'll  excuse,"  said  Betsy. 

So  they  arrived  cheerfully.  They  slept  that  night.  Oh, 
how  they  all  slept  —  even  Mrs.  Penstephen  who  had  not 
thought  to  sleep.  Betsy,  awake  betimes,  did  not  call  the 
children,  and  saw  too  that  her  mistress  was  not  called.  Mrs. 
Penstephen  should  have  slept  the  clock  round  if  Betsy  had 
had  her  way. 

And  now  things  began  to  happen  in  German  instead  of 
Belgian-French.  The  people  were  different,  the  dogs  were 
different,  the  wares  in  the  shops.  Everything  smelled  dif- 
ferent. In  the  grocer's  shop  where  some  of  the  provisions 
were  bought,  there  was  the  most  delicious  smell  that  David 
had  ever  smelt.  It  was  compounded  of  many  things,  but 
sugar-candy,  dried  figs,  and  coffee  were  its  most  recognis- 
able ingredients.  The  molasses  and  the  sugar-cane  of  the 
boys'  books,  which  became  part  of  his  life  later  on,  always 
made  him  think  of  the  smell  of  this  shop.  He  carried,  in- 
deed, a  recollection  of  it  through  the  length  of  his  days.  It 
took  its  place  amongst  the  nice  smells  which  he  stored  in 
his  mind.  Everything  had  its  smell  for  David's  young 
nostrils:  the  faces  of  Georgina's  wax  dolls;  the  tin  ducks 
with  the  shining  metallic  colours  which  he  'swam'  in  his 
bath  and  which  followed  a  magnet;  his  leaden  soldiers;  his 
tops;  his  box  of  paints;  doU's-house  furniture,  the  little 
wooden  chests-of-drawers  particularly;  books,  their  bind- 


24  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

ings  —  a  gluey  smell ;  and  many  things  which  were  n't  sup- 
posed to  have  a  smell  at  all,  such  as  marbles  and  glass  and 
china.  Natural,  then,  that  for  David,  different  countries 
should  have  their  distinguishing  smells  —  different  towns 
even.  The  smell  of  Brussels,  for  instance,  was  quite  differ- 
ent from  that  of  Antwerp,  but  both  were  Belgian,  and  quite 
different  from  French.  Cookery  entered  into  the  smells  of 
all  towns.  David  knew  Swiss  smells  (there  were  not  many, 
somehow)  from  Italian.  Homburg  he  told  Betsy  smelt 
German  —  but  not  a  bit  like  Cologne. 

To  Betsy  the  smells  of  one  place  were  pretty  much  like 
those  of  another.  Some,  to  be  sure,  worse  than  others. 
Homburg,  it  was  true,  was  wholly  agreeable. 

"I  like  England  meself,"  she  said  —  "for  choice  and  for 
preference  —  where  there's  none." 

David  would  have  found  some. 

"None  to  speak  of,"  she  said.  "There's  right  and  there's 
proper  smells,  of  course.  Vinegar,  now.  I  've  noticed  that, 
perhaps  in  the  street  passing  an  oyster  stall.  And  maybe 
oranges  at  the  play.  And  if  it's  coffee  you  want,  why,  they 
roast  that  too  in  England.  There's  windows  I  could  take 
you  past  as'd  make  your  mouth  water.  And  the  flowers 
I  'm  sure  smell  lovely.  It  is  n't  only  abroad.  Master  David, 
that  there's  coffee  and  flowers.  Covent  Garden,  now.  I  've 
been  there.  Nothing  to  equal  it.  And  a  shop  in  the  Strand 
where  the  berries  are  roasted  and  ground  for  the  customer. 
What  I  mean  to  say,  in  England  there's  no  drains." 

Oh,  it  was  n't  only  drains,  David  said. 

"It's  just  the  smells  of  places." 

"Be  rights,"  said  Betsy,  "places  did  n't  ought  to  have 
none." 

"Well,  they  have,"  said  David. 

The  smell  of  the  delicious  grocer's  might  stand  to  him 
for  the  smell  of  Homburg. 

"When  we  was  here  before,"  said  Betsy,  who  had  a  way 
of  changing  the  subject  when  any  particular  point  seemed 
to  her  to  have  been  discussed  long  enough,  or  perhaps 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  25 

when  she  could  not  think  of  anything  more  to  say  regard- 
ing it,  "there  was  the  Tables.  It  was  the  summer  and  the 
place  full  of  grand  folks.  There  was  one  lady  I  remember 
as  they  said  had  gambled  away  a  whole  street  —  the  Chrys- 
alis-Strass  if  I  remember  right.  There  was  royalties  here 
too.  H.R.H.'s  of  all  sorts.  You  would  n't  hardly  re- 
member." 

"I  wish  you  would  n't  think  I  did  n't  remember  things, 
Betsy.  You  always  do.  And  I  do  remember.  I  remember 
the  taste  of  the  black  bread  —  that  was  here.  I  remember 
the  rusks  and  the  goat's  milk  and  feeding  the  deer.  They 
put  their  noses  through  railings  with  bark  on  them,  and 
breathed  quite  hot  on  your  hand  when  you  gave  them  grass. 
Sniffing  it,  you  know.  Then  they  turned  their  tongues 
round  it." 

He  did  appear  to  remember. 

"Bless  the  boy,"  said  Betsy. 

Georgina  now  said  that  she  remembered. 

"Oh,  come,  come,"  said  Betsy. 

Georgina  could  n't.  David  knew  that.  She  had  only 
been  a  baby.  Goodness,  he  remembered  longer  ago  than 
Homburg.  He  believed  he  remembered  the  smell  of  warm 
india-rubber  which  must  have  dated  from  the  bottle  days; 
but  perhaps  in  that  he  was  remembering  through  and  for 
Georgina. 

Long  words,  gutturals,  in  the  ears;  attempts  and  achieve- 
ments on  the  lips.  David's  German  was  said  to  be  coming 
back  to  him. 

"Get  'em  a  German  nursery-maid,"  counselled  Mr.  Pen- 
stephen.  "Some  one  to  help  Betsy  and  talk  German  to 
them.    Some  one  who  only  knows  a  few  words  of  English." 

So  the  family  was  to  stay  on  at  Homburg.  Mrs.  Pen- 
stephen  consulted  Betsy  and  then  consulted  Frau  Finkel. 
Frau  Finkel  knew  of  no  one  just  then.  A  fortnight  ago  and 
she  could  have  laid  her  hand  upon  the  very  person  for 
them. 


26  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"  Ach,  vat  a  pity.  Dere  vas  Carlotta  Meinz  —  de  very 
ting  for  you.  So  goot  vid  children.  De  daughter  of  de  man 
dat  vinds  de  clocks.  Tree  months  she  vant  a  situvation. 
A  lady  engages  her  de  veek  before  last.  Dat  is  all,  just  de 
veek  before  last.  But  I  look  about.  I  enkvire  for  you.  I 
ask  de  maids.   Dey  may  know." 

A  young  girl,  Mrs.  Penstephen  thought.  About  seven- 
teen or  eighteen.  Younger  even  if  she  was  steady.  Some 
one  who  would  play  with  the  children. 

"  I  know  joost  vat  you  vant.  To  play  mit  de  children  in 
Chairman."  . 

"Just  so." 

"And  dey  learn  de  habit  of  speaking  vidout  knowing  dey 
learn.  Alvays  vid  games.  She  should  be  a  little  above,  den. 
A  little  educated  more.  Better  perhaps  I  do  not  ask  de 
maids." 

' '  Not  a  nursery  governess , "  said  M  rs .  Penstephen .  ' '  The 
children  are  hardly  old  enough  for  that." 

"Na  —  no,  betvixtand  betveen.  I  speak  to  my  sister-in- 
law.  She  teaches  a  school.  Very  likely  she  know  some  von. 
I  go  to  her  dis  efening." 

"Well,  not  any  one  too  superior." 

"No,  no,  Madame.  But  just  of  nice  peoples  and  a  goot 
bringing-up.  Leave  it  to  me.  Perhaps  I  find  you  some  one 
even  petter  dan  Carlotta  Meinz." 

She  found  Katinka  Heinz. 

Katinka  Heinz  was  of  nice  peoples  and  a  good  bringing- 
up,  the  daughter  of  the  grocer  (no  less)  of  the  shop  with  the 
delightful  smell.  Katinka,  who  got  her  odd  name  from  her 
mother,  who  had  not  been  German,  and  many  other  for- 
eignesses  also,  was  not  destined  for  service,  but,  for  the 
advantage  which  it  would  be  to  her  to  be  with  a  distin- 
guished English  family,  her  father  was  ready  to  allow  her 
(and  she  most  anxious  to  be  allowed)  to  take  the  place 
which  Mrs.  Penstephen  wanted  to  fill. 

Mrs.  Penstephen,  oddly,  Frau  Finkel  thought,  seemed  to 
demur.   She  had  thought  of  a  nursery-maid  —  not  some 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  27 

one  in  the  position  of  Katinka  Heinz.  Frau  Finkel  knew 
the  moderate  terms  which  she  had  proposed  to  offer. 

Dat,  Frau  Finkel  said,  was  understood.  It  was  de  vish 
of  Katinka  to  take  de  place.  She  vished  to  be  treated,  more- 
over, just  like  as  if  she  was  de  oder.  Not  like  a  governess 
at  all.  She  was  not  a  governess.  She  was  just  de  children's 
maid  under  Fraulein  Betsee.  Katinka  loved  children. 
She  had  seen  already  dese  at  her  fader's  shop,  and  asked 
nothing  better  dan  to  be  allowed  to  come. 

Still  Mrs.  Penstephen  demurred. 

"Oh,  Madame,  he  advise.  Even  better  dan  Carlotta 
Meinz,  and  dat  was  not  likely.  I  know  Katinka's  fader  all 
my  life  —  so  respected.  Belief  me,  you  can  trust  de  chil- 
dren wid  her  mit  an  easy  mind.  I  make  myself  surety  of 
it." 

"Oh,  it  is  n't  that,"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen. 

"And  a  good  accent,"  said  Frau  Finkel;  "so  important, 
like  I  always  say,  in  learning  a  lankvidge.  I  had  myself  de 
advantage  of  my  moder's  broder  who  married  an  Enklish 
voman.  Dat 's  how  I  spik  so  easy.  Enklish  is  kvite  natcherl 
to  me." 

Mr.  Penstephen  was  out.  So,  at  the  moment,  was  even 
Betsy.  There  was  no  one  to  consult. 

"If  you  would  perhaps  see  Katinka  — " 

"Oh,  yes,  I  would  see  her." 

"I  send  her  up,"  said  Frau  Finkel. 

Katinka  it  seemed  was  below.  Frau  Finkel  was  at  the 
door  before  Mrs.  Penstephen  had  made  up  her  mind  what 
to  answer.  Almost  at  once  the  two  could  be  heard  ascend- 
ing, Frau  Finkel  talking  all  the  way. 

"Dis  is  de  young  person.  Dis  is  Katinka  Heinz  who  has 
come  about  de  gracious  lady's  situvation." 

The  blushing  Katinka  made  her  obeisance. 

"Better  now  I  leave  you,"  said  Frau  Finkel.  "And  you 
speak  up,  Katinka,  and  answer  all  vat  de  lady  asks  you." 

Katinka  turned  her  smiling  blush  toward  her.  Frau 
Finkel,  admonishing  with  her  eyelids,  withdrew. 


28  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

The  lady  did  not  seem  to  have  much  to  ask.  What  she 
appeared  to  want  to  know  chiefly  was  whether  Katinka 
was  quite  certain  that  she  wanted  to  come  to  her. 

Katinka  was  quite  certain,  more  certain  than  ever  since 
she  had  seen  the  gracious  lady  face  to  face. 

"Tell  me  why  you  want  to  come,"  said  Mrs,  Penstephen, 
looking  at  her  kindly,  but  still  with  perplexity  on  her  fore- 
head and  in  her  eyes.  She  spoke  in  German. 

"I  love  children,"  said  Katinka  in  the  same  language. 
"  I  have  always  loved  to  be  with  them.  I  have  little  broth- 
ers and  sisters,  but  they  are  little  no  longer.  We  are  four.  I 
am  seventeen  and  a  half  already  —  and  the  youngest  is 
twelve.  Not,  Madame  will  see,  little  any  more.  Not  to 
need  me  if  the  lady  will  understand." 

"But  my  children  won't  need  you  in  that  sense,"  said 
Mrs.  Penstephen,  still  looking  at  her,  as  Katinka  saw,  very 
kindly.   "They  have  their  old  nurse." 

"That  is  true.  It  would  be  my  hope  to  make  them  like 
me  too.  I  am  happy  with  children.  I  have  the  lucky  way 
with  them.   It  is  thus  happy  for  me  also." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  considered.  She  continued  to  look  at 
Katinka.  Katinka  thought  she  had  the  kindest  face  she  had 
ever  seen,  and  wondered  why  it  was  also  one  of  the  saddest. 
This,  inside  Katinka;  Katinka  outside  showed  fluttering 
eyelids  and  a  colour  which  came  and  went  —  which  came 
again,  indeed,  each  time  almost  before  it  had  quite  gone. 

"I  am  indeed  good  with  children,"  she  said  out  of  the 
silence  and  speaking  for  sheer  shyness.  "There  are  some 
like  that.  They  will  tell  you  at  home.  Or  Frau  Finkel. 
She  will  speak  for  me." 

"You  don't  need  any  one  to  speak  for  you,"  said  Mrs. 
Penstephen.  "You  do  that  for  yourself  —  better  than  it 
could  be  done  for  you." 

"Oh,  have  I  said  too  much?  Pardon.  I  did  not  mean  to 
praise  myself.   I  —  I  am  so  anxious." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  laid  a  hand  on  Katinka's  arm. 

/'My  child,  you  have  n't  praised  yourself.  You  have  n't 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  29 

said  a  word  too  much.  It  would  have  been  the  same  if  you 
had  n't  spoken.  I  meant  —  oh,  it  does  n't  matter  what  I 
meant,  does  it?  —  since  it's  quite  plain,  as  far  as  that  goes, 
that  I  am  pleased  with  you,  Katinka." 

"Oh;  gracious  lady.  You  engage  me." 

Katinka  trembled  with  excitement.  She  looked  younger 
even  than  her  seventeen  years  —  '  and  a  half  already '  — 
at  that  moment.  She  was  very  pretty,  with  blue  eyes  and  a 
very  fair  skin,  and  hair  as  abundant  as  that  of  the  laugh- 
ing Gretchen,  but  richer  in  colour  and  finer  in  texture.  A 
daughter  of  whom  a  parent  would  be  proud. 

Mrs.  Penstephen  was  beginning  to  shake  her  head  when 
Katinka's  eyes  filled  with  sudden  tears.  She  engaged  her. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Katinka.  came  every  morning  at  half  past  seven  and  left 
every  evening  when  the  children  were  in  bed.  Betsy,  at  first 
just  the  least  little  bit  antagonistic  to  her,  —  or  perhaps 
rather  to  the  idea  of  her  than  to  Katinka  herself,  —  was 
not  of  a  jealous  disposition,  so  she  bore  no  malice,  and  when 
she  grew  accustomed  to  the  idea  of  Katinka  she  soon  ac- 
cepted Katinka.  She  would  have  been  obliged  to  admit 
anyway  that  Katinka  was  a  success. 

It  had  been  a  disappointment  to  Katinka  that  she  was 
not  to  sleep  at  her  employer's.  Mrs.  Penstephen,  when  she 
had  spoken  to  Frau  Finkel  about  a  nursery-maid,  had 
certainly  meant  one  who  should  sleep  in,  but  with  Katinka 
she  had  settled  that  she  should  come  by  the  day.  Katinka's 
home  was  so  near  that  the  arrangement  naturally  suggested 
itself. 

The  plan  certainly  answered  admirably.  Katinka  was 
never  late  in  the  morning.  Half  past  seven,  or  even  a  little 
before  that,  saw  her  at  the  door  of  the  room  known  as  the 
nursery. 

"Hallo,  Katinka,"  from  David. 

"Hallo,  Katinka,"  from  Georgina  the  echo. 

"But  in  German,"  said  Katinka,  and  reminded  them 
every  morning  that  she  was  not  allowed  to  speak  English. 

Betsy  always  laughed. 

"You'll  be  turning  them  into  little  foreigners,"  she 
said. 

"Dis  is  vat  I  am  here  for,"  said  Katinka,  also  laughing. 
She  was  allowed  to  speak  English  to  Betsy. 

She  was,  indeed,  as  she  had  said,  good  with  children. 
Betsy  was  wonderful,  but  Katinka  was  wonderful  in  an- 
other way.    Her  appeal  was  always  to  the  imagination. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  31 

She  cast  a  spell  over  the  most  ordinary  things  so  that  a 
walk  became  as  great  an  adventure  as  the  longest  journey 
David  had  ever  taken;  and  the  trivial  round  was  illumined 
and  glorified.  From  a  walk  she  would  bring  back  fir  cones 
which  she  would  sow  with  grass  seed,  and,  lo,  presently 
miniature  forests  on  miniature  mountain  peaks.  She 
showed  the  children  how  to  plant  mustard  and  cress  upon 
flannel ;  and  how  a  beautiful  palm-like  plant  would  spring 
from  a  mere  carrot-top  in  a  saucer  of  water.  Any  one 
could  have  done  this.  But  the  process  of  enchantment  — 
it  took  a  Katinka  for  that.  The  saucer  was  a  lake,  the  car- 
rot-top an  island  in  the  middle  of  it.  Inhabitants  were 
invented  to  dwell  under  the  shade  of  its  one  palm-like  tree. 
Katinka  knew  the  way;  had  the  secret;  understood  or 
remembered  the  child-mind. 

When  it  was  stormy  they  would  n't  be  able  to  get  away 
from  the  island,  David  would  say. 

The  lake  was  n't  often  stormy,  she  would  answer.  It 
was  quite  clear.  It  was  white  like  the  bottom  of  a  beauti- 
ful swimming-bath.  They  did  swim  in  it  sometimes. 

They  took  off  their  clothes  under  the  tree,  said  David. 

Yes,  and  left  some  one  to  look  after  them  for  fear  they 
should  be  stolen.  And  they  always  put  one  toe  into  the 
water  before  they  stepped  in,  to  see  if  it  was  warm. 

And  if  it  was  n't  warm,  what  did  they  do? 

The  brave  ones  still  went  in.  They  splashed  about  and 
said,  'Oh,  you  don't  know  how  delicious  it  is  to-day.'  But 
the  other  ones  knew  they  were  only  pretending. 

What  did  they  do? 

Put  their  clothes  on  again  and  waited  for  another  day. 

"I  should  have  gone  in." 

Betsy  would  stand  sometimes  looking  on. 

"J  don't  understand  your  gibberish,"  she  would  say  to 
Katinka.   "What's  it  all  about?" 

David  would  explain. 

"Well,  the  carrot-top's  very  pretty,  that  I  will  say,  and 
it's  marvellous  to  me  what  all  those  leaves  grow  out  of, 


32  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

considering  that  it's  decapitated,  so  to  speak,  and  no  soil 
to  nourish  it  either.  The  mustard  and  cress,  of  course,  is 
English." 

"You  have  not  de  carrot  in  Enkland,  no?" 

"Oh,  bless  you,  we've  carrots,"  said  Betsy,  "and  I  dare 
say  they  'd  grow  in  an  English  saucer.  But  there  would  n't 
be  these  fairy  tales  about  them." 

"You  have  not  fairies  in  Enkland,  no?" 

"No,"  said  Betsy. 

There  was  the  exact  difference  in  wonderfulness. 

Betsy  was  wonderful,  but  she  had  no  fairies.  Katinka 
was  wonderful  and  had. 

She  told  the  children  about  them.  Even  Georgina 
seemed  to  understand.  David  stood  enthralled  at  Ka- 
tinka's  knee. 

Or  she  would  teach  them  games.  There  was  Lotto, 
Betsy  would  play  for  Georgina.  Or  she  would  dress  dolls  — 
not  a  bit  like  just  dressing  dolls  (which  David  affected  to 
despise,  but  could  not  help  being  interested  in);  or  she 
would  fold  some  paper  —  newspaper  would  do  —  into  a  long 
cone-shaped  wedge,  and  giving  it  cuts  on  alternate  sides 
with  the  nursery  scissors,  would  transform  it  into  hanging 
net-like  baskets.  With  coloured  paper  she  said  you  could 
make,  thus,  'ornaments'  for  the  looking-glasses,  or  decora- 
tions for  the  stoves.  She  was  never  at  a  loss.  She  could 
transform  a  wet  day  when  they  could  n't  go  out  into  some- 
thing better  than  a  fine  one.  She  it  was  who  introduced 
David  to  the  delights  of  transfer  pictures.  That  was  the 
day  of  the  Great  Rain  when  it  never  stopped  pouring  from 
morning  till  night. 

Katinka  said  in  English  "  I  know  vat  ve  do,"  and  put  on 
her  hat  and  her  cloak  and  borrowed  Betsy's  goloshes,  and 
went  out  mysteriously  into  the  deluge  with  some  kreuzers 
and  her  big  umbrella.  She  came  back  to  the  expectant 
children  in  ten  minutes  or  so,  saying,  "  My  vord  but  it  vas 
vet,"  and  carrying  something  wrapped  up  in  paper.  Some- 
thing was  itself  paper  —  paper  all  over  little  pictures. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  33 

Decalcomanie,  as  nearly  as  David  could  arrive  at  what  she 
called  them! 

"You  vait,"  she  said.  "You  vill  see.  You  put  dem  on 
books  or  on  china  or  on  glass  —  on  any  ting  dat  you  vant." 

None  of  Georgina's  came  off  whole.  David  tore  most  of 
his  or  spoilt  them  by  lifting  up  a  corner  to  see  how  they 
were  getting  on,  —  as  the  boiling  of  a  pot  is  delayed  by 
lifting  its  cover,  —  but  breathless  interest  filled  the  nursery. 
That  was  a  wet  day  redeemed. 

Or  she  amused  them  all  with  her  photograph  album. 
This  was  her  father  in  his  best  coat,  and  that  was  her 
mother  who  was  dead.  Here  were  her  paternal  and  mater- 
nal grandparents.  Yes,  funny  the  clothes  of  their  day  so 
long  ago  already.  The  stern  old  woman  in  the  cap  was  her 
father's  mother  who  yet  lived  and  whom  they  all  visited 
from  time  to  time,  never  forgetting  to  take  her  a  present  of 
a  particular  sausage  which  she  was  very  fond  of  and  which 
was  not  to  be  obtained  so  good  at  Frankfort  where  she 
lived.  These  were  Katinka's  aunts — 'Tante  Maria  with 
the  edging  of  forget-me-nots  round  the  photograph,  and 
Tante  Wilhelmina  with  the  lace  shawl. 

Mrs.  Penstephen,  it  chanced,  came  in  while  the  album 
was  being  shown.  She  looked  over  the  blushing,  happy 
Katinka's  shoulder,  while  David  of  his  knowledge  told  her 
eagerly  who  every  one  was. 

"The  ugly  one  is  Katinka's  Aunt  Wilhelmina,"  he 
finished. 

Of  nice  peoples  and  good  bringing-up,  plainly.  Can  it 
have  been  because  this  was  so  unmistakably  so,  that,  as 
Mrs.  Penstephen  went  back  to  the  sitting-room,  her  face 
wore  the  anxious  look  with  which  those  who  knew  and 
loved  it  best  were  familiar?  Nothing  but  contentment, 
however,  in  the  faces  round  the  nursery  lamp. 

Or  Katinka  would  sing  to  them,  Ihr  Kinderlein  kommet, 
and  Ich  hat'  einen  Kamaraden,  Keinen  hessern  finds  dii  nicht, 
and  Im  Rosen  Garten,  and  Der  Winter  ist  kommen.  David 
presently  could  sing  some  of  these.    He  could  sing  Der 


34  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Tannerhaum  through;  and  join  in  the  Juvivalara  chorus 
of  the  haunting  Wanderlied.  He  would  pipe  to  himself  by 
the  hour  —  laying  up  for  himself,  if  he  could  have  known 
it,  by  weaving  the  melodies  upon  which  they  were  to  string 
themselves,  memories  by  the  dozen.  In  after  years  he 
never  heard  the  Tannerhaum  without  recalling  not  Katinka 
only,  but  by  reason  of  the  atmosphere  with  which  she  was 
surrounded  and  which  spread  itself  over  the  German  town, 
and  all  that  it  held,  many  things  with  which  it  would  have 
been  difficult  to  connect  her  even  indirectly. 

Presently  Mrs.  Penstephen  would  come  in  to  hear  the 
singing.  By  degrees  peace  seemed  to  be  stealing  over  her 
and  banishing  the  look  of  apprehension  from  her  face.  She 
would  take  Georgina  on  her  lap,  sometimes  even  David, 
and  would  join  in.  Then  must  the  scene  presented  have 
looked  more  domestic  than  ever.  Betsy  by  the  stove  work- 
ing; Katinka  holding  the  tune  when  the  other  voices  wa- 
vered; his  mother  and  Georgina,  a  Madonna  and  Child; 
David  often  tried  to  recall  the  scene  completely.  Sometimes 
Mr.  Penstephen  would  look  in  for  a  few  minutes.  He  fitted 
into  the  picture  too,  and  yet  he  was  a  little  bit  disturbing. 
Betsy  and  Katinka,  rising  to  their  feet,  had  to  be  told  to  sit 
down.  They  rose  equally,  of  course,  for  Mrs.  Penstephen 
when  she  came  in;  but  Katinka,  when  it  was  Mr.  Pen- 
stephen, had  generally  to  be  told  more  than  once  before 
she  could  be  prevailed  upon  to  resume  her  seat,  while  from 
Mrs.  Penstephen  the  merest  gesture  sufficed. 

"Not  hymns,  are  they?"  he  had  said  the  first  time. 

David's  mother  had  shaken  her  head. 

Der  Tannerhaum?  Wanderlied?  Der  Winter?  Ich  hat^ 
einen  Kamaraden  ? 

Not  those.  The  Kinderlein  one. 

"Let  them  alone,  John." 

The  Kinderlein  one  was  dangerously  like  a  hymn.  It 
was  also  Mrs.  Penstephen's  favourite. 

Mr.  Penstephen  let  them  alone. 

"Now  the  Mill  song,"  David's  mother  would  say. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  35 

This  was  a  new  one  sung  to  an  accompaniment  of  tissue 
paper  (though,  as  in  the  case  of  the  material  for  the  net- 
work baskets,  even  newspaper  would  do!),  rubbed  slowly- 
round  and  round  on  the  nursery  table  to  imitate  the  sound 
of  water  churned  by  a  wheel.  Very  popular  the  Mill  with 
David  and  little  Georgina,  who  churned  and  churned  as 
they  sang. 

"It's  supposed  to  be  water,  Father.   Did  you  guess?" 

Father  had  guessed.  But  he  had  also  made  Katinka  shy. 
The  accompaniment,  which  had  been  so  pretty  before,  was 
perhaps  silly?  It  was  n't  silly,  of  course,  really.  It  was  one 
of  Katinka's  wonderfulnesses.  On  the  whole,  the  singing 
went  better,  and  the  picture  must  consequently  have  been 
more  in  key  (like  the  singing)  when  Mr.  Penstephen  did  not 
come  in, 

David  was  perhaps  too  young  to  notice  that,  though  Ihr 
Kinderlein  kommet  was  undoubtedly  his  mother's  favourite, 
she  never  asked  for  it  when  his  father  was  there. 

Und  seh't  was  in  dieser  hochheiliger  Nachi 
Der  Vater  im  Himmel  fur  .  .  . 

Betsy  noticed,  we  may  be  sure.  But  then  Betsy,  who 
understood  not  one  word  of  German,  had  understood  only 
too  well  —  had  been  the  only  one  except  her  mistress  to 
understand  —  the  allusion  to  hymns.  Ihr  Kinderlein 
kommet,  albeit  'as  good  as  Greek'  to  her,  became  her  fa- 
vourite also.  '  Der  Vater  im  Himmel '  may  have  conveyed 
its  meaning  to  her  and  it  is  probable  that  she  recognised 
the  word  'Bethlehem'  as  it  came.  Betsy,  unlike  her 
incomprehensible  master,  dearly  dearly  dearly  liked  a 
hymn. 

Nothing  had  been  said  to  Katinka.  It  had  been  thought, 
perhaps,  that  the  point  —  religion  —  would  just  not  arise. 
It  did  not  directly.  She  was  there  to  play  with  them  (in 
German),  not  to  teach  them.  Indirectly,  of  course,  it  did 
arise  many  times.  But  the  children  were  too  young  to  know- 
that  anything  was  lacking.    Missing  nothing,  they  did 


36  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

not  know  that  something  was  withheld.  Betsy,  who  was 
not  allowed  to  teach  them  prayers,  mentioned  them,  we 
may  be  sure,  in  her  own. 

No.  Mr.  Penstephen  might  make  his  mind  easy ;  the  songs 
were  not  hymns  (with  the  possible  exception  of  the  Kinder- 
lein  one) ;  but  they  took  the  place  of  hymns  in  the  strangely 
regulated  family.  David  all  his  life  looked  back  to  the 
songs,  as  others  look  back  to  '  Gentle  Jesu,  meek  and  mild,' 
or  '  Now  the  day  is  over,'  or  the  '  Promised  Land,'  and  with 
kindred  or  perhaps  the  very  same  feelings.  Ihr  Kinderlein 
would  always  be  sacred  to  him,  but  so  would  Wanderlied, 
even  with  its  jubilant  exulting  rousing  chorus  —  a  very 
Onward-Christian-Soldiers  of  a  chorus !  —  and  of  course 
Ich  hat'  einen  Kamaraden. 

"Don't  you  wish  you  could  sing  them,  Betsy?" 

"Ah,  I  can  listen.   Perhaps  that's  better." 

That  was  something  David  admitted,  but  it  could  n't  be 
the  same  as  singing  them.  Why  did  n't  Betsy  join  in? 
Georgina  did,  though  she  could  n't  manage  the  words. 
Even  he,  David,  did  n't  understand  all  of  them,  though  of 
course  he  could  say  them. 

"Me  sing  German?"  said  Betsy. 

"I  teach  you,"  said  Katinka. 

"Thank  you,"  said  Betsy,  "English  is  good  enough  for 
me.  There's  songs  in  that,  though  I  dare  say  you  won't 
believe  me." 

"Betsy  can  sing  'Pretty  Polly  Perkins  of  Paddington 
Green.'" 

"And  ' Polly  put  the  kettle  on.' " 

"All  Pollies!"  said  Katinka. 

"A  popular  name  in  my  country,"  said  Betsy.  "Oh, 
there's  songs  there  right  enough.  Sims  Reeves,  I  've  heard 
him.  There's  'Tom  Bowling'  if  you  want  a  good  cry,  and 
'Annabel  Lee,'  and  'The  'eart  bowed  down,'  and  'When 
other  lips.'  And  there's  'The  Perfect  Cure'  if  you  want  to 
laugh,  and  '  I  'm  ninety-five,  I  'm  ninety-five,  and  to  keep 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  37 

single  I'll  contrive' —  Oh,  all  the  songs  are  n't  German, 
Katinka,  my  dear,  and  don't  you  think  it." 

"Gote  safe  de  Qveen,"  said  Katinka,  to  show  that  she 
knew. 

"Ah,  there  I  agree  with  you,"  said  Betsy. 

Are  we  spending  too  much  time  in  a  nursery?  The  gentle 
reader  will  bear  with  us.  His  own  early  days  were  passed 
there  and  made  him,  or  perhaps  only  shewed  him  to  have 
been  then,  what  he  is  to-day.  Many  things  had  their  be- 
ginning, or  began  to  find  their  expression  or  their  outlet  in 
the  room  called  the  nursery  at  Frau  Finkel's  house  that 
winter.  For  David  in  later  years  events,  happenings,  be- 
ginnings, endings  were  apt  to  date  from  that  morning 
when  he  was  taken  whimpering  from  his  warm  bed  in 
Brussels,  to  prepare  for  the  journey  which  was  to  land  him 
in  Homburg  and  bring  the  blushing  Katinka's  influence  to 
bear  upon  his  life. 


'0'  9  R  9  9 

•J     <i  O  r«  ?«* 


CHAPTER  V 

There  were  other  diversions  besides  singings  and  transfer 
pictures  and  growings  of  plants  on  such  impossible  things 
as  flannel  or  in  saucers.  There  were  paintings  of  pictures 
with  paints  from  Katinka's  own  paint  box,  which  she 
brought  round  to  supplement  those  of  the  children,  which 
lacked  the  usual  percentage  of  the  little  flat  bricks  of  colour. 
Some  of  the  bricks  in  Katinka's  box  were  worn  through  to 
a  hole,  notably  the  crimson  lake  which  was  a  mere  rim,  and 
the  gamboge  which  shewed  the  wood  of  the  box  under- 
neath most  perceptibly;  but  till  the  children  used  them  not 
any  of  them  were  stained  to  any  appreciable  degree  with 
colours  which  were  not  their  own.  Katinka  conscientiously 
used  the  little  saucers  provided  for  mixing,  and  washed 
and  wiped  her  brushes  continually.  She  liked  to  paint 
flowers:  roses,  convolvuluses,  forget-me-nots.  David  drew 
and  painted  trains.  It  would  be  difficult  to  say  what 
Georgina  drew  or  painted.  Betsy  got  through  a  great  deal 
of  work  when  it  was  painting. 

There  was  making  paste.  This  was  called  making  paste, 
but  the  paste  was  prepared  before  it  was  given  to  the  chil- 
dren to  play  with  —  flour  and  water  kneaded  to  the  con- 
sistency of  a  firm  dry  dough.  With  the  substance  thus  pro- 
duced, exercises,  if  you  please,  in  the  plastic  art!  They 
made  and  unmade  and  remade  things :  snakes  (very  popu- 
lar) ;  the  human  form  (very  difficult  —  Katinka's  models 
the  only  ones  recognisable !) ;  sausages  (popular  too) ;  ani- 
mals—  well,  pigs  anyway;  ropes  (indistinguishable  from 
snakes) ;  plaits  (Katinka) ;  and  loaves  —  English  loaves 
particularly,  with  an  elbow-mark  made  with  the  finger  on 
top.  Lastly  generally  the  loaves,  by  which  time,  however 
clean  the  hands  to  start  with,  the  paste  was  nearly  black. 
The  loaves  were  then  baked  on  the  stove  and  smelt  de- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  39 

licious.  The  disappointment  came  always  when,  delicious 
as  they  smelt,  they  might  not  be  eaten. 

"Eat  them!  Well,  I  never,  nor  nobody  else,  I  should 
think,  in  their  senses.  After  messing  them  all  over  the  table 
and  on  the  window-sill,  to  say  nothing  of  how  many  times 
they've  been  on  the  floor.  Black  as  me  hat  the  nasty  stuff 
was  last  time  I  looked  at  it." 

David  pointed  out  that  it  was  not  black  now  that  it 
was  baked,  and  that  you  could  eat  black  bread  anyway, 
could  n't  you,  Katinka? 

"You  won't  eat  this  black  bread,  Master  David.  And 
here's  Miss  Georgina  baked  one  of  the  worms  —  well, 
snakes,  then.  Fancy  eating  a  snake  even  if  it  was  clean. 
And  I  'm  bound  to  say,  what  with  the  knots  and  things,  it 
still  looks  to  me  more  like  a  worm.  No,  no,  now  it's  done 
with  we'll  throw  this  all  out  for  the  birds." 

Invariable  end  of  their  masterpieces !  There  were  serious 
drawbacks,  it  will  be  seen,  to  the  beguiling  diversion  of 
paste-making.  The  pastime  fell  perhaps  under  too  many 
heads:  if  it  was  cooking,  the  end  should  surely  have  been 
the  table;  if  modelling,  the  efforts  should  surely  have  been 
preserved  —  treated,  by  courtesy  at  least,  as  works  of  art, 
and  so  reputedly  imperishable.  A  loaf,  or.  Model  of  a  Loaf; 
a  fancy  biscuit,  or.  Model  of  a  Snake  Recumbent. 

Betsy  did  not  get  through  so  much  work  when  the  diver- 
sion was  paste-making. 

There  was  Acting.  David  could  sometimes  recapture  the 
thrill  of  these  early  actings.  Katinka  was  perhaps  at  her 
most  wonderful  when  it  was  acting.  She  was  stage-man- 
ager, playwright,  scene-painter,  scene-shifter,  prompter, 
wardrobe-keeper,  dresser,  leading  lady,  juvenile,  first  old 
man,  first  old  woman,  singing  chambermaid,  voice  without, 
crowd  'off,'  and  innumerable  other  things  of  which  (as  of 
these)  David  was  not  even  to  know  the  names  till  much 
later  in  his  life.  The  Shawl,  fastened  by  Katinka's  ingenu- 
ity to  David  could  never  remember  afterwards  what,  was 
the  curtain.  The  rugs  disposed  over  footstools  and  chairs 


40  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

were  rocks,  or  mossy  banks,  or  forest  glades  as  the  case 
might  be.  Or,  with  paper  doors  and  windows  pinned  on  to 
them,  they  were  Baronial  Halls  or  Cottage  Exteriors,  or 
Fronts  of  Palaces.  Nothing  baffled  Katinka.  If  she  had 
ever  heard  of  a  Transformation  Scene  she  would  have  con- 
trived to  produce  one.  The  plays  were  all  in  English  in  the 
interests  of  Betsy,  the  audience  (who  had  to  pay  for  her 
seat,  as  had  also  Mrs.  Penstephen  when  she  came  to  the 
performances,  and  even  Frau  Finkel  when  she  came  — 
which  was  once.  Only  Anna  and  Gretchen  were  on  the  free 
list).  The  stage-directions  were  in  German  and  so  supposed 
to  be  inaudible. 

"Ach,  who  are  dese  that  come  into  dis  lonely  place? 
Better  I  visdraw  into  de  house  and  vatch."  Exit  Katinka. 
"Now,"  in  rapid  German  whispers,  "you  go  on  with  Miss 
Georgina  by  the  hand  and  say"  (breaking  into  English), 
"Ah,  vat  a  lovely  place.  I  so  tired  am.  And  also  as  veil 
my  little  sister.  Rest  ve  here  a  little  under  shade  of  dis 
tree." 

Enter  David  leading  Georgina.  Words  in  his  piping 
treble  as  above. 

Katinka  prompting  (David  repeating  sentence  by  sen- 
tence) :  "But  vat  is  dis?  A  house?  And  see.  Oh,  vat  is  dis 
dat  I  beholt?  All  made  of  chincherbread.  And  de  vindows 
of  barley  sugar.  Break  ve  off  a  piece.  Eat  ve." 

Voice  of  the  Witch  from  within:  "Who  is  dis  dat  breaks 
my  vindows,  dat  munches  off  pieces  of  my  house?  Oh, 
vat  mischievousnesses.  Vait  till  I  come.  Listen.  You  hear 
my  footsteps.   I  approach.   I  draw  by.   I  am  here." 

Entry  of  Katinka  as  the  Witch.  Howls  of  terror  from 
Georgina,  who  has  to  be  comforted  by  the  audience  and  re- 
assured by  a  sight  of  Katinka  herself  through  her  disguise, 
before  the  play  can  proceed. 

And  so  on  and  so  forth.  Oh,  the  nursery  in  Katinka's 
day  was  an  enchanted  place.  It  was  there  that  David 
knew  first  that  when  he  grew  up  he  wanted  to  be  an 
actor. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  41 

And  the  readings.  Most  enthralling  perhaps  of  all.  Is  it 
possible  that  he  had  read  Captain  Marryat's  Jacob  Faith- 
ful in  German?  Jacob  Erlich.  How  else  should  he  have 
known  the  name?  It  is  quite  certain  that  he  was  introduced 
to  the  many  magics  of  the  Brothers  Grimm  —  in  English, 
too,  oddly  enough,  the  book  in  translation  being  an  old 
school  prize  of  Katinka's  and  the  rule  of  German  only  hav- 
ing been  relaxed  by  then  in  the  interests  of  poor  isolated 
Betsy  and  the  partly  isolated  Georgina.  A  round-eyed 
David  at  Katinka's  knee.  An  excited  David  struggling  to 
his  feet  sometimes;  dancing  round  her;  hardly  able  to  con- 
tain himself.  A  David  moved  to  laughter.  A  David  moved 
to  tears.  The  Golden  Bird;  The  Youth  who  could  not  Shiver 
and  Shake;  The  Fisherman  and  his  Wife;  Hansel  and  Grethel 
(known  these  before  in  Katinka's  dramatic  version  and 
rapturously  recognised);  The  False  Bride  (oh,  Falada,  Fal- 
ada,  most  lovable  of  talking  horses !) ;  The  Magic  Mirror 
('Mirror,  Mirror  on  the  wall,  Who  is  most  beautiful  of 
all?');  we  may  envy  him. 

What  did  Katinka's  accent  matter  as  she  read?  — 

"  Fair  qveen  at  home,  dere  is  none  like  dee, 
But  over  de  mountains  is  Snow-vite  free, 
Vid  sefen  little  dvarts,  who  are  strange  to  see, 
She  is  a  tousand  times  fairer  dan  dee! " 

Even  Betsy  was  interested.  Georgina,  who  could  n't 
be  expected  to  concentrate  her  attention  upon  what  she 
imperfectly  understood,  generally  slid  to  the  floor  in  the 
course  of  a  reading,  but  managed  to  amuse  herself  well 
enough,  there,  not  to  prove  a  serious  interruption. 

When  one  story  was  finished  David  begged  for  another. 
Georgina  always  joined  in  the  begging  whether  she  under- 
stood or  not.  Betsy  said,  "She  likes  the  sound  of  the 
voice."  Children  often  did,  it  seemed.  "But  are  n't  you 
tired,  Katinka?"   Katinka  always  shook  her  head. 

"She  is  n't  tired,"  said  David;  and  truly  she  never  was. 

"De  Lankvidge  of  Animals.  Vould  you  like  dat?" 

David  seemed  uncertain  that  he  would  like  that. 


42  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

^^ De  King  of  de  Golten  Mountain.'' 

Yes,  that,  that.  No  uncertainty  here.  His  preferences 
gradually  became  apparent.  He  liked  things  with  '  Golden ' 
in  them:  The  Golden  Bird;  The  Golden  Castle  of  Strom- 
berg;  The  Three  Golden  Hairs.  And  things  with  numbers. 
Threes  and  sevens  particularly:  the  Golden  Hairs  doubly 
then;  The  Three  Spinning  Fairies;  The  Three  White 
Snakes;  The  Three  Little  Men  in  the  Wood;  The  Seven 
Ravens;  The  Seven  Wise  Men;  The  Wolf  and  the  Seven 
Young  Kids.  And  things  made  of  things:  The  Coffin  of 
Glass;  The  Crystal  Ball.  And  things  with  adjectives:  The 
Magic  Fiddle;  The  Wonderful  Travellers;  The  Fearless 
Prince. 

Sometimes  bedtime  came  in  the  middle  of  a  story. 
Pleadings  then.  Firmness  under  difficulties  on  the  part  of 
Betsy.  He  learnt  the  seduction  of  the  'To  be  Continued,' 
a  phrase  which  was  to  be  very  familiar  to  him  later  on.  He 
looked  forward  to  the  reading  hour  as  he  looked  forward  to 
nothing  else  in  his  happy  shadowed  young  life.  So  uncon- 
sciously, happily,  was  it  shadowed !  Just  then  even  to  his  J 
mother  it  did  not  seem  shadowed  at  all.  In  the  calm  and 
the  domesticity  of  Frau  Finkel's  apartments  she  was  be- 
ginning to  forget  again.  Presently,  of  course,  something 
would  happen;  something  always  did;  but,  in  the  mean- 
time, peace.  She  found  herself  slipping  in  to  listen  to  the 
readings.  Readings  were  not  new  things.  She  used  often 
to  read  to  the  children  herself,  and  to  their  invariable 
pleasure.  But  it  had  fallen  to  Katinka  to  light  upon  the 
magic  Grimm. 

Hans  Andersen  she  promised  herself  should  be  for  her. 

What  was  it  about  Grimm?  Some  of  the  stories  could  not 
be  said  to  be  quite  rightly  conceived.  'The  Frog  Prince,' 
for  instance.  Could  justice  —  poetic  justice  even  —  be  said 
to  be  satisfied  in  that?  The  little  spoilt  Princess,  obliged 
by  the  King,  her  father,  to  keep  her  promise  to  the  ugly 
frog,  that,  for  rescuing  her  ball  from  the  fountain,  he  should 
eat  from  her  golden  plate,  drink  from  her  cup,  and  sleep  in 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  43 

her  silken  bed,  keeps  it  no  better  than  by  dashing  him  with 
all  her  strength  against  the  wall  of  her  outraged  room — 
—  when,  lo,  as  if  she  had  deserved  reward,  the  frog  changes 
into  a  handsome  young  Prince  with  beautiful  friendly  eyes, 
and  the  two  live  happily  ever  after! 

Something  amiss  there  surely.  She  looked  at  David,  ex- 
pecting to  see  him  indignant  or  puzzled.  He  was  for  a 
moment.  Then  she  saw  his  face  light  up.  He  jumped  about 
in  his  eagerness. 

"He  meant  her  to.  He  meant  her  to.  That  was  why  — 
why  he  said  sleep  in  her  silken  bed.   Don't  you  see?" 

"How  do  you  mean,  David?" 

"Don't  you  see?"  flushed,  breathless.  "The  frog  knew 
she  would  n  't.  He  was  wet  and  cold.  He  could  n't  sleep  in 
a  bed.  He  had  to  be  dashed  against  a  wall  to  be  turned 
into  a  Prince,  and  that  was  the  only  way  he  could  think  of." 

It  was  rather  wonderful.  Was  Grimm  or  was  David  the 
more  wonderful?  It  took  a  child  to  see  what  was  intended 
for  children.  She  abandoned  her  criticism.  You  don't 
criticise  masters.  You  accept  them.  Thereafter  she  ac- 
cepted Grimm  as  David  did. 

So  Katinka  continued  to  read.  There  were  many  stories 
to  choose  from.  A  hundred  and  thirty,  indeed.  David 
made  her  count  them. 

"When  we've  heard  them  all  we  can  begin  again,  can't 
we?" 

Katinka  looked  at  Mrs.  Penstephen. 

"It  is  n't  learning  German." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  smiled  back  at  her. 

"Perhaps  it 's  as  good  for  them,"  she  said.  After  David's 
luminous  speech  she  was  n't  sure  that  it  was  n't  better  than 
learning  anything. 

How  did  Katinka  understand  so  well? 

So  the  weeks  passed.  Even  Mr.  Penstephen  seemed  to 
have  come  to  anchor.  It  was  long  since  he  had  been  con- 
tent to  stay  so  lengthy  a  period  in  any  one  place.  He  shewed 


44  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

no  signs  of  wishing  to  move  —  none,  even,  of  restlessness. 
The  luggage  was  having  a  hohday.  One  of  these  days  the 
order  must  come,  but  it  did  not.  Betsy  began  to  put  down 
tentative  roots;  said  she  wanted  one  or  two  Httle  things  for 
the  rooms;  was  allowed  to  buy  them.  Suggested  new  anti- 
macassars for  the  sitting-room  chairs.  Was  allowed  to 
make  them.  Saw  some  nice  delft  jars  for  holding  flower- 
pots. Was  allov/ed  to  get  these.  Jars,  mark  you,  which 
would  have  to  be  left  behind.  That  looked  like  staying. 
A  case  of  wine  which  arrived  was  a  healthy  sign,  too.  You 
removed  wine  no  more  than  unpackable  delft  jars.  Nor 
was  that  all.  At  first  the  meals  had  come  in  from  a  neigh- 
bouring hotel  —  layers  of  covered  dishes  packed  in  deep 
round  baize-lined  wicker  baskets,  with  a  vertical  gap  at  one 
side  through  which  you  might  see  the  stacked  porcelain 
and  pewter  tier  upon  tier,  with  steam  coming  out  of  the 
top.  Quite  hot  and  satisfactory  but  rather  unhomely.  Now 
Mrs.  Penstephen  did  her  own  housekeeping  and  Frau 
Finkel  cooked.  That  gave  you  a  feeling  of  stability.  Where 
there  was  housekeeping  there  was  necessarily  a  house  to 
keep.  You  did  not  lay  in  provisions  that  you  would  not 
have  time  to  use,  and  the  big  chiffonnihe  in  the  dining- 
room  was  almost  now  a  storeroom.  All  the  signs  were 
favourable. 

"We  never  were  more  comfortable,"  she  ventured  to  her 
mistress. 

Mrs.  Penstephen  was  a  little  superstitious  and  she  did 
not  answer. 

"Nearly  as  good  as  a  furnished  house,  anyway,"  said 
Betsy.  She  might  at  least  say  that. 

It  wanted  a  piano  to  make  the  thing  secure  — ■  the  clinch- 
ing, final,  locking,  or  sealing,  fact  of  a  piano.  Katinka,  with 
her  successful  singings  and  actings  and  paste-makings  and 
readings,  was  something.  The  antimacassars  were  some- 
thing. The  housekeeping,  the  stocked  chiffomiiere,  the  case 
of  wine  —  the  case  of  wine  especially  —  all  something. 
But  a  piano  by  the  month,  carried,  moreover,  up  all  those 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  45 

stairs,  —  to  more  creakings  and  jeopardisings  of  paint  and 
plaster  than  the  largest  or  the  heaviest  of  the  trunks  was 
capable  even  of  suggesting  to  the  anxious  mind  of  the  most 
apprehensive  of  landladies,  —  that  would  have  meant 
something,  indeed,  and  much  more  than  something!  That 
would  have  promised  weeks  and  more  than  weeks;  months; 
three,  perhaps  even  six.  Betsy,  little  partial  as  she  was 
to  what  she  called  comprehensively  Abroad,  thought  she 
could  have  welcomed  the  prospect  of  as  many  as  make  a 
year  in  peaceful  Homburg. 

But  there  was  no  talk  of  a  piano. 

There  had  been  one  the  winter  they  spent  in  Florence  — 
and  it  had  been  a  whole  winter  they  had  spent  there.  There 
had  been  one  in  Paris  —  a  stretch  of  six  months.  There  had 
been  one  at  Geneva  —  three.  A  piano,  in  this  sense,  a 
piano  of  course  from  the  shop.  Quite  a  different  thing  from 
the  pianos  you  found  in  hotels,  or  in  lodgings,  as  part  of  the 
furniture.  Those  meant  nothing.  The  piano  to  mean  any- 
thing—  to  be  a  gage,  or  to  hold  a  promise  —  must  be 
hired. 

Not  a  word  of  one. 

Betsy  looked  about  for  music  shops. 

Found  one. 

"I  don't  know  what  it  is  about  the  drawing-room,"  she 
said  to  her  mistress  that  evening  as  she  brushed  her  hair. 

"What  about  it?"  asked  Mrs.  Penstephen.        * 

"That's  what  I  say,  'm.  I  don't  know  what  it  is  about 
it.  What  would  it  be?" 

"What  would  what  be?" 

"What's  wrong  with  it?" 

"  I  don't  understand.  Is  anything  wrong  with  it?  I  don't 
see  anything  wrong  with  it." 

"No,  'm  —  I  shall  bring  the  plait  again  across  the  top  to- 
morrow if  you  '11  let  me.  I  'm  sure  it  suits  you  that  way 
best  —  No,  'm,  not  to  say  wrong  exactly." 

"It's  more  comfortable  flat,"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen. 

"The  parting,  'm?  Yes,  I  grant  you,  your  head  being  so 


46  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

classical.  I  would  n't  dream  of  touching  that.  But  like  I 
used  to  do  it  for  you  in  Paris.  Just  the  plait  — " 

"Well,  we'll  see.   But  the  sitting-room  here  — " 

"Yes,  'm.  I  don't  know,  I'm  sure.  Always  looks  to  me 
a  little  bit  bare,  'm." 

"Bare!  But  it's  full  of  furniture." 

"Then  I  can't  think  what  it  would  be." 

She  went  back  to  the  subject  of  hair-dressing. 

"  If  it  was  n't  for  me,  'm,  I  believe  you  'd  still  be  doing  it 
the  way  it  was  worn  ten  years  ago.  And  you  with  such 
beautiful  hair  and  such  a  quantity,  though  so  fine.  I  de- 
clare it 's  a  shame.  I  don't  believe  you  'd  ever  think  of  the 
fashion." 

"I  don't  believe  I  should,"  Mrs.  Penstephen  said,  but 
she  smiled. 

"There's  a  confession,"  said  Betsy. 

"But  about  the  room  — " 

"I  shall  just  do  it  the  new  way  and  see  if  the  Master 
notices." 

"He  won't  like  it." 

"  He  won't  notice.  Besides  it  is  n't  new  really  —  because 
of  Paris,  as  you  remember.  Though,  to  be  sure,  I  must  try 
it  just  a  little  different  —  nothing  that  you'd  notice  your- 
self even,  but  just  a  little  more  in  the  mode.  The  sitting- 
room,  'm  ?  Yes,  seems  to  me  to  want  something,  and  I 
can't  for  the  life  of  me  think  what  it  is  — unless"  —  Betsy 
selected  a  strand  from  the  rest  and  brushed  vigorously, 
pausing  to  comb  out  the  ends  —  "unless  it  would  be  a 
piano.  Do  you  think  perhaps,  'm,  it's  a  piano?" 


CHAPTER  VI 

Betsy's  Becauses  never  proved  anything. 

"There  is  a  shop,"  she  said  now,  "because  I've  hap- 
pened to  see  one.  German,  of  course,  but  there's  Grands 
and  Cottages  like  anywhere-else  because  I  took  it  upon  me 
just  to  peep  in.  I  suppose  if  you  got  one  it'd  be  a  Cottage." 

It  would  of  course  be  a  'Cottage.'  You  never  somehow 
thought  of  grand  pianos  in  connection  with  hiring. 

"Because  of  the  stairs,"  said  Betsy. 

"Because  of  the  expense,"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen. 

But  really  because  you  somehow  always  did  hire  cottage 
pianos  and  life  was  governed  —  even  for  people  who  set 
certain  conventions  at  defiance  —  by  what  you  did  and 
what  you  did  not,  in  the  seventies. 

"A  cottage  piano,  of  course,"  Mrs.  Penstephen  said. 
"But  I  had  n't  thought  of  one." 

"It's  only  the  look  of  the  thing,"  said  Betsy,  plaiting 
now  very  busily.  "A  room  without  a  piano,  to  my  mind, 
that  is  — " 

"Yes,  I  know,"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen.  It  was  like  what- 
ever Betsy  had  been  about  to  say. 

"Besides  it  is  n't  only  that,"  Betsy  proceeded  —  having 
just  said  that  it  was!  "It's  your  music,  'm.  Your  own 
singing.  It's  I  don't  know  how  long  since  you've  touched 
one  —  a  piano,  I  mean.  And  you  ought  n't  to  give  up  your 
singing  If  it 's  only  for  the  children's  sake  —  let  alone  your 
own  —  and  the  Master's.  Have  I  done  it  too  tight,  'm?" 

"No,  you've  done  it  just  right." 

The  allusion  to  the  children  would  do  it  if  anything  did. 

"Nothing  else  I  can  do  for  you?" 

"No,  Betsy." 

"Then  good-night,  'm." 

"Good-night." 


48  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Betsy  knew  when  to  stop.  What  she  had  said  must  have 
time  to  soak  in.  She  was  conscious  of  having  been  the  least 
little  bit  disingenuous,  for  it  was  neither  the  look  of  the 
room  nor  the  thought  of  the  music  that  had  primarily 
moved  her  to  speak.  These  certainly  had  their  place  in  her 
thoughts,  as  had  the  children  in  connection  with  the  one 
indirectly,  and  with  the  other  very  directly  indeed;  but 
the  real  incentive  was  her  longing  for  branchings-out,  for 
enmeshments,  entanglements  even  — anything  that  should 
make  the  usual  upheavals  a  little  more  difficult.  Let  us 
then  be  involved  with  big  things,  with  cumbersome  things, 
with  heavy  things.  Weight  even  counted.  The  idea  was 
less  confused  than  it  may  appear. 

Nothing  was  said  the  next  day.  Betsy  did  not  even  im- 
pose upon  her  mistress's  reluctant  head  the  threatened 
change  in  the  hair-dressing.  To  have  done  so  would  have 
brought  up  the  subject  with  which  she  had  allied  it,  too 
soon.  She  would  stay  her  hand,  reserving  this  till  she 
should  need  it  —  if  she  should  need  it  —  for  a  stepping- 
stone  or  a  bridge  by  which  she  might  pass  from  the  one 
topic  to  the  other.  "But  what  was  it  we  was  talking  about 
the  other  night  when  I  made  the  suggestion?  The  plait  so, 
I  thought.  A  piano,  to  be  sure,  'm,  —  the  room  looking  so 
bare."  In  some  such  way  if  need  be.  Meanwhile,  need 
might  not  be. 

Was  not  that  Mrs.  Penstephen  humming  to  herself  over 
her  work?  As  Betsy  listened  there  came  words  — 

"Oh  how  shall  I  woo  thee,  beautiful  Spring, 
What  shall  my  offering  be  — " 

That  was  what  Betsy  called  More  Like. 
The  song  changed  presently  to  another.    Better  and 
better! 

"I'm  afloat,  I'm  afloat  on  the  deep  rolling  tide, 
The  ocean 's  my  home  and  my  bark  is  my  bride- 
Up,  up  with  my  flag,  let  it  wave  in  the  sea  — 
I  'm  afloat,  I  'm  afloat  and  the  Rover  is  free, 
I  'm  afloat,  I  'm  afloat  and  the  Rover  is  free." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  49 

Not  one  of  her  own  songs,  of  course,  but  one  of  the  songs 
of  the  moment. 

Betsy  smiled  to  herself.  It  was  long  since  her  mistress 
had  sung.  Was  it  the  talk  of  the  night  before?  She  sang 
again  in  the  course  of  the  next  day  or  two. 

It  was  now  that  Betsy  ventured  to  unpack  the  music 
that  lay  at  the  bottom  of  one  of  the  large  trunks. 

She  appeared  at  the  sitting-room  door  with  a  fiat  pile  of 
it  in  her  hands. 

"I  thought  perhaps  you  would  n't  mind  this  lying  here, 
'm.  I  had  to  go  to  the  bottom  of  the  box  for  a  paper  pattern 
I  thought  might  be  there  but  was  n't,  and  a  little  bit  of  the 
lining  of  the  box  wants  mending,  I  see,  when  I  've  time. 
There, 'm,  I  '11  put  them  on  this  lower  shelf  of  the  what-not 
where  they'll  be  out  of  the  way." 

"Very  well,  Betsy.  For  the  present.  They'd  better  go 
back  when  you've  mended  the  lining." 

"Just  for  the  time  being,  'm  —  that's  what  I  thought." 

But  later  in  the  day  she  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  her 
mistress  kneeling  by  the  what-not  with  a  chair  beside  her, 
going  through  the  sheets  one  by  one.  Betsy  had  not  un- 
packed all  —  just  her  mistress's  favourite  songs.  Mrs. 
Penstephen  looked  at  each  as  she  smoothed  out  its  creases 
and  dog's-ears.  The  covers  of  almost  all  of  them  were  em- 
bellished with  the  steel  or  copper  arabesques  and  flourishes 
of  the  fifties  and  sixties.  Betsy,  like  David  who  knew  them 
well,  always  associated  these  curves  and  twists  and  loops 
and  spirals  with  an  attempt  upon  the  part  of  the  engraver 
to  picture  melody  itself  —  draw,  as  perhaps  she,  or  more 
probably  David,  would  have  said,  the  sound  of  the  tune. 

"They've  got  folded,  I'm  afraid,  some  of  them,  from 
lying  in  the  same  place  so  long  and  under  the  weight  of  the 
other  things  in  the  box.  I  ought  to  have  unpacked  them 
before.  But  somehow  it  did  n't  seem  hardly  worth  while. 
Shall  I  look  through  them  and  straighten  them  out?" 

"La  Donna  b  Mobile.  I'd  forgotten  I  had  that.  I  used 
to  sing  it  years  ago.   No,  Betsy,  I  like  doing  it." 


50  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"Some  of  them  you 'II  find  torn,  I  'm  afraid,  but  I '11  soon 
mend  those  up  with  some  strips  of  paper  and  gum." 

"Rose  of  the  Garden,  She  wore  a  Wreath  of  Roses,  Mem- 
ory's Chaplet,  The  Harp  that  once  through  Tara's  Halls. 
I  used  to  sing  all  those.  I  wonder  whether  I  've  forgotten 
them." 

A  miscellany  rather  than  a  repertory.  A  plentiful  sprin- 
kling of  Claribel  —  many  songs,  inherited  some  of  them, 
done  with  long  since  even  then,  but  some  that  were  not 
done  with,  perhaps  never  would  be. 

"Is  The  Banks  of  Allan  Water  there,  'm?  I  mis-re- 
member." 

It  was  there. 

And  Barbara  Allen,  and  Hunting  Tower,  and  Annie 
Laurie,  and,  oh,  yes.  Drink  to  me  only. 

Even  then  Betsy  did  not  speak  of  the  piano.  But  she 
left  Mrs.  Penstephen  still  occupied  with  the  music  and  her 
memories,  and  went  back  to  the  nursery  well  satisfied. 

Katinka,  looking  up  from  bead-threading,  with  the  ab- 
sorbed young  heads  one  on  each  side  of  her,  said  "Frau- 
lein  Betsee  looks  happy." 

The  absorbed  young  heads  looked  up  too. 

"Frorleen  Betsy  is  fairly  this  evening,  she  thanks  you," 
said  Betsy.  "And  are  we  to  have  no  reading?  'Snow- 
-white  and  Red-rose,'  was  n't  it,  last  night  when  we  went 
to  bed?  Are  n't  we  to  know  the  end  of  that?" 

No  mention  of  pianos  the  next  day.  But  Mrs.  Pen- 
stephen asked  for  the  gum.  Betsy,  bringing  it  in  to  her, 
found  her  seated  at  a  table  cutting  linen  into  strips  of  dif- 
ferent sizes;  the  torn  music  before  her. 

"Should  n't  I  have  done  that  for  you,  'm  —  or  Katinka? 
Anything  with  pasting  she's  very  good  at.  Mended  all  the 
children's  picture  books,  and  made  them  think  it  was  a 
game,  too.  Them  standing  by  watching  like  mice.  Shan't 
I  take  them  to  her?" 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  51 

But  Mrs.  Penstephen  shook  her  head. 

"No,  Betsy.  It  gives  me  occupation.  Besides,  it's  a 
pleasure  to  me." 

That  it  was  was  evident.  Betsy,  departing,  saw  her  bend 
over  her  work. 

Another  day  passed.  The  music  lay  pressing  under  some 
heavy  volumes  —  Frau  Finkel's,  part  of  the  furniture  of 
the  sitting-room.  Well,  if  the  piano  was  coming  ultimately 
the  very  delay  was  promising.  Rightly  seen,  every  day 
without  it  was  a  day  gained,  a  day  snatched  from  the 
wandering.  But  Betsy  wanted  an  assurance.  Nay,  the 
piano  itself  was  the  assurance  she  wanted.  It  stood  to  her 
for  a  symbol  of  permanency. 

But  that  night  a  conversation  —  nine  words  in  all  — ■ 
took  place  between  David's  mother  and  father  which  it 
would  have  pleased  his  nurse  to  hear. 

Mr.  Penstephen  was  reading  as  his  custom  was  in  the 
evening,  and  Mrs.  Penstephen  was  knitting.  The  domestic 
picture  again  if  there  had  been  any  to  see !  She  had  a  book 
open  upon  her  knees,  but  she  was  not  reading.  She  was  not 
a  quick  knitter  nor  perhaps  a  very  expert  one.  Even  after 
years  of  knitting  she  had  difficulties  with  such  subtleties  as 
the  heels  of  stockings,  graduations,  and  the  like;  but  the 
simple  nature  of  what  she  was  engaged  upon  just  then  —  a 
woollen  comforter  for  David  —  would  have  allowed  her  to 
read  while  she  worked  if  she  had  been  so  minded.  So  the 
book  was  there  to  have  its  part  in  the  unconscious  and  un- 
seen picture.   Never  surely  was  irregularity  more  regular. 

She  had  looked  over  at  David's  father  two  or  three  times, 
when  she  broke  the  silence. 

"John." 

"Yes,  dear." 

"I  want  a  piano." 

"Get  one." 

That  was  all.  Perhaps  David's  mother  had  some  such 
thought  as  Betsy.  Perhaps  she,  equally,  learned  thus  that 
they  were  to  stay  on  at  Homburg.  Perhaps  guessing  then 


52  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

by  analogy  or  by  very  sympathy  what  had  been  in  Betsy's 
mind  and  what  was  still  in  it,  she  determined,  with  a  twin- 
kle in  her  happier  eyes,  that  she  would  punish  her.  It  was 
anyway  not  till  the  next  morning  that  Betsy  heard  that 
her  hope  was  to  be  realised. 

"Of  course  we  shall  only  hire  it  by  the  day,"  Mrs.  Pen- 
Stephen  said. 

"The  day,  'm!"  said  Betsy,  dismayed. 

"What  would  be  the  use  of  any  other  arrangement?  It 
is  n't  as  if  we  were  likely  to  be  here  for  any  time." 

"No,  'm?" 

"Why,  we've  been  here  five  weeks  already." 

"Is  it  so  much,  'm?" 

Betsy's  round  face  was  a  yard  long. 

"I  doubt,"  she  began  gravely,  "whether  they'll  let  you 
have  one  —  not  by  the  day,  'm.  ..."  She  caught  her 
mistress's  eye  and  broke  off.  "Oh,  'm.  You're  laughing! 
Well,  there!" 

Yes,  Mrs.  Penstephen  was  laughing. 

"Did  you  think  I  did  n't  see  through  you,  Betsy?  By 
the  month,  of  course,  you  old  goose.  You  can  make  your 
mind  easy.  As  far  as  I  can  see  we  've  no  thought  just  yet 
of  moving  on  anywhere.  There,  does  that  make  you 
happy?" 

"And  you  making  game  of  poor  Betsy!  Well !  But  I  con- 
fess I  'm  anxious  not  to  begin  packing  up  again  yet  awhile. 
And  it  does  somehow  give  an  air  of  stability,  now,  does  n't 
it?" 

"What  does?" 

"A  piano." 

"As  anxious  as  that?"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen. 

"As  anxious,"  said  Betsy. 

"Oh,  Betsy,"  said  Mrs.  Penstephen  suddenly,  "how  you 
must  hate  it  all." 

So  completely  did  mistress  and  maid  understand  each 
other. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  53 

The  business  of  choosing  the  piano  included  Betsy  (for 
sheer  kindness  as  Betsy  knew),  and,  to  David's  joy,  in- 
cluded David.  Nothing  was  much  more  delightful  to  him 
than  grown-up  shoppings.  He  was  always  fairly  good  in 
a  shop  and  did  n't  touch  —  though  he  did,  of  course,  ask 
questions.  There  were  shops,  for  which  reason,  that  he 
was  n't  taken  to  —  the  chemist's,  for  easy  example,  where 
questions  were  apt  to  be  embarrassing.  In  a  music  shop, 
however,  he  might  safely  ask  about  everything  that  he 
saw. 

A  very  happy  little  boy  put  his  hand  into  his  mother's 
to  go  and  choose  a  piano. 

"For  that's  what  we're  going  to  choose,"  she  said,  smil- 
ing, "though  Betsy  here  will  have  it  it's  an  anchor." 

"  A  what?  "  said  David. 

His  mother  nodded. 

"That  ships  are  tied  to?" 

"To  prevent  their  moving  away." 

"I  should  like  it  to  be  an  anchor,"  said  David,  "but  I'd 
rather  it  was  a  piano." 

"Perhaps  it  will  be  both,"  said  Betsy. 

They  reached  the  shop.  There  were  long  rows  of  pianos, 
—  more  pianos  than  David  had  ever  seen  before  in  the 
course  of  his  life,  —  for  it  was  out  of  the  season  and  nearly 
all  were  in.  There  were  some  eight  or  nine  for  his  mother 
to  choose  from  —  not  one  in  the  remotest  degree  like  an 
anchor. 

David  for  some  reason  or  other  often  thought  of  this  day. 
Was  it  that  it  was  one  of  those  when  his  mother  seemed 
happy?  Was  he  perhaps  more  conscious  than  he  knew  that 
such  days  were  rare?  He  went  and  stood  beside  her  as  she 
sat  down  to  a  piano  and  tried  it.  She  had  taken  off  her 
gloves.  He  liked  to  look  at  her  hands  on  the  keys.  He 
liked  the  blue  of  the  turquoise  in  one  of  her  rings,  and  the 
white  of  the  pearls  in  another,  and  the  red  of  a  ruby  in  a 
third.  He  looked  up  from  her  hands  to  her  face.  She  seemed 
to  be  listening  with  her  eyes. 


54  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"The  treble  's  a  little  weak,  is  n't  it,  David?" 

David  said  "Yes,"  but  looked  astray,  and  she  laughed. 

"We'll  try  another  one,  shall  we?" 

The  next  was  too  stiff. 

"This  is  better,"  said  his  mother  at  the  third. 

It  was  all  rather  like  Grimm.  Was  that  why  he  was 
enjoying  it  so  much? 

"Oh,  try  another." 

"I  don't  think  we  shall  do  better  than  this." 

But  she  tried  another  and  another  to  please  him,  or  just 
for  happiness.  She  went  back  to  the  one  she  had  com- 
mended. David  tried  now  on  his  own  account  —  tenta- 
tively striking  a  note  or  several  in  a  discordant  bunch. 

"This  is  the  best,  is  n't  it?" 

"Yes,"  said  David  judicially;  "that  one"  —  he  pointed 
to  the  first  —  "the  tremble  's  weak,  is  n't  it  .  .  .  the  what 
you  said." 

"Yes,  in  that  one  the  tremble's  weak  —  what  you  said, 
David." 

David  laughed  because  she  did.  Betsy  laughed  too, 
though  she  used  wrong  words  herself!  The  piano  which 
was  called  the  best  was  chosen  and  David  was  said  to  have 
chosen  it.   It  was  a  very  happy  day. 

' '  Contented ,  Betsy  Prig  ?  " 

But  that  was  David's  mother's  own  joke  and  shewed  how 
happy  she  was  that  day,  for  Betsy's  real  name  was  Tarver. 

That  afternoon  the  piano  arrived.  Frau  Finkel  danced 
on  the  landings  in  anxiety  for  her  walls  and  her  banisters. 
But  all  was  well  and  the  symbol  of  perpetuity  was  set  up 
in  the  sitting-room.  Every  one  came  in  to  see;  Anna  and 
Gretchen  even,  and  of  course  Katinka.  Betsy  looked  in 
again  early  in  the  morning  as  if  to  make  sure  that  it  had 
not  disappeared  in  the  night.  Then  David's  mother  took 
up  her  singing  once  more  —  did  exercises,  Ah's  and  La's, 
runs  and  trills,  for  half  an  hour  by  the  clock  every  day,  so 
that  the  sound  of  her  practising  —  with  the  very  word  — 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  55 

established  itself  amongst  the  things  which  from  their  fa- 
miliar nature  seemed  enduring.  David  would  have  spoken 
of  it  in  connection  with  time  future,  as  he  would  have 
spoken  or  thought  of  anything  else  that  was  habitual  and 
so  part  of  life  as  he  knew  it.  To-morrow's  practising  seemed 
as  certain  as  to-morrow's  breakfast.  There  was  a  particu- 
lar set  of  exercises  that  his  mother  used  —  Ah's  and  La's 
to  captivating  tunes  —  which  gave  him  almost  as  much 
pleasure  as  a  song  with  words.  These  exercises  came  to  be 
the  sound  of  these  quiet  times,  as  German  foo.,  was  the 
taste  of  them,  and  the  pot-pourri  of  the  delicious  grocer's 
shop  the  smell  of  them. 

So,  with  the  piano  for  a  symbol, — something,  according 
to  Betsy,  to  look  at,  or  to  go  by,  —  things  might  be  said  to 
have  taken  on  some  semblance  of  stability.  The  'Brad- 
shaw'  lay  unopened  on  a  shelf  instead  of  on  the  writing- 
table,  or,  indeed,  instead  of  wherever  Mr.  Penstephen  had 
sat  last;  and  was,  moreover,  not  the  issue  for  the  current 
month.  The  literature  of  travel  was  not  now  in  evidence  — 
Murray's  'Guides,'  hotel  tariffs,  local  time-tables,  etc.  The 
larger  trunks,  empty  at  last,  or  holding  such  things  only  as 
were  not  likely  to  be  in  immediate  requisition,  were  allowed 
to  find  their  way  to  Frau  Finkel's  box-room.  And  for  all 
these  things,  —  blessed  tokens,  as  she  considered  them, 
of  the  fulfilment  of  her  heart's  desire,  —  Elizabeth  Tarver 
burned  her  grateful  incense  before  a  rosewood  cottage 
piano. 


CHAPTER  VII 

What  a  curious  family  David  came  of!  Irregularity  one 
could  have  understood,  but  what  was  this?  If  this  was  ir- 
regularity, never  then  was  regularity  itself  more  regular. 
Betsy  looked  upon  it  as  All  Because  of  Books  and  Clever- 
ness —  a  certain  sort  of  books,  of  course,  and  a  certain  sort 
of  cleverness.  Traced  back,  everything  would  be  found  to 
begin  with  the  books  being  supposed  to  have  found  out 
that  the  Book  of  all  was  mistaken,  and  that  the  world  had 
not  been  made  in  six  days.  Six  days  were  good  enough  for 
Betsy.  The  books  and  Mr.  Penstephen,  and  Mrs.  Pen- 
stephen's  late  parents  (who  had  been  Advanced),  and  of 
course  Mrs.  Penstephen  (who  was  not  intended  by  nature 
to  be  advanced  at  all,  but  who  believed  necessarily  what 
her  parents  believed  before  her),  all  asked  for  millions  of 
years  for  the  accomplishment  of  what  every  one  had  been 
accustomed  to  accept  as  the  completed  work  of  the  inside 
of  a  week.  The  inside,  too,  at  the  outside —  "Because, "  as 
Betsy  would  have  told  you,  "of  Sunday."  Itall  began  there. 
The  rest,  as  she  understood  it,  was  the  trembling,  the  tot- 
tering, the  collapsing,  that  was  supposed  to  follow  such  an 
undermining  of  the  elaborate  structure.  Mr,  Penstephen, 
the  rebellious  outcome  of  his  upbringing  at  the  hands  of  a 
Calvinistic  uncle  and  aunt,  had  thought  himself  glad  to  see 
the  whole  thing  go.  The  iron  had  entered  deeply  into  his 
young  indignant  soul,  and  when  he  saw  himself  able,  as  he 
Bupposed,  to  pull  it  out,  he  recked  little,  in  his  pride,  of 
what  came  with  it.  He  broke  away  from  his  family.  Those 
were  the  days  when  people  who  chose  to  think  for  them- 
selves were  not  generally  found  amongst  what  were  then 
known,  as  a  matter  of  course,  as  the  upper  classes.  The 
Penstephens  were  related  to  many  of  the  oldest  families  in 
the  kingdom,  and  the  age  of  the  baronetcy  in  their  own  was 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  57 

respectable  enough  to  make  It  of  account.  Sir  John,  brother 
of  the  Calvinist  but  lax  enough  himself,  spoke  of  his  God- 
fearing sons  —  despite  the  dimensions  of  the  crop  of  wild 
oats  they  managed  to  sow,  the  one  at  Oxford  and  the  other 
in  his  regiment  —  but  always  of  his  Infidel  nephew.  His 
sons  at  least  conformed  to  the  tenets  of  their  order  and 
sinned  in  accepted  ways,  settling  down  later  to  eminently 
desirable  marriages.  Edward,  the  elder,  died  childless  and 
left  an  invalid  wife,  but  the  second,  Joseph,  who  presently 
succeeded  him,  happily  had  a  son  to  cut  the  Infidel  out  of 
the  succession.  John,  David's  father,  —  the  Infidel  as  his 
relations  called  him,  —  sowed  no  wild  oats.  He  did  what 
was  thought  to  be  worse.  He  was  young  then,  wielded  an 
easy  pen,  and,  in  an  amused,  contemptuous  sort  of  way, 
ranged  himself  with  the  fighters.  The  attitude  of  his  family 
cannot  have  failed  to  increase  his  own  inborn  pride.  He 
professed  himself  —  though  always  a  little  bit  as  one  who 
stoops  —  at  war  with  stupidity,  bigotry,  superstition,  and 
(though  he  loved  orderliness  and  was  at  heart  a  Tory !)  the 
established  order.  In  this  —  the  established  order  —  he 
included  most  of  the  things  which  in  themselves  he  found 
admirable.  It  stood,  however,  for  what  had  brought  it 
about.  It  stood,  moreover,  for  the  enemy's  citadel.  It 
must  go  with  the  rest.  When  his  uncles  died,  the  fight,  to 
be  sure,  lost  some  of  its  zest  for  him;  and,  in  his  thirtieth 
year,  more  and  more  content  to  be  amused  and  contemptu- 
ous, and  the  ardours  of  youth  being  over,  he  ceased  active 
fighting.  But,  by  then,  the  cry  had  gone  up  for  supporters 
with  the  courage  of  their  opinions,  and  he  had  made  his 
protest  once  for  all.  In  it  —  a  new  era  being  supposed,  as 
in  Rousseau's  time,  to  have  dawned  or  to  be  dawning  —  he 
was  but  carrying  out  to  their  logical  end  the  views  which 
the  parents  of  David's  mother  had  held  so  earnestly  in 
their  lives,  and  in  it  she  herself,  ignorant  of  the  world,  in- 
spired by  love,  admiration,  and  sympathy,  and  with  a  con- 
fidence that  was  unfeigned  and  that  was  certainly  in  one 
sense  not  misplaced,  had  most  unreservedly  concurred. 


58  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

David's  father  and  David's  mother  made  their  protest 
jointly.  Thus,  as  we  see  with  Betsy  —  primarily  and,  so, 
finally  —  thus  of  the  Books  and  the  Cleverness! 

David,  then,  on  his  father's  side  had  plenty  of  substan- 
tial and  even  grandish  relations,  if,  upon  his  mother's,  — 
the  Professor's  Daughter  as  these  contemptuously  called 
her,  —  he  had  none.  His  father's  mother  had  been  a  Miss 
Cheshire  —  of  the  Cheshires  of  Oulton,  a  family  of  some 
importance;  hers  a  Miss  Fitz-Urse.  There  was  a  Pen- 
stephen  great-aunt.  There  were  Penstephen  cousins,  and 
cousins  once-removed,  and  others.  There  had  been  a  Pen- 
stephen aunt;  unmarried;  but  she  had  died.  There  were 
Cheshire  and  Fitz-Urse  cousins  of  various  degrees.  And 
there  were  others  and  yet  others  as  the  several  families 
branched.  Amongst  all  these  not  one  that  he  knew.  He 
had  often  heard  of  his  Aunt  Flora,  and  had  once  seen  her, 
but  he  could  not  be  said  to  have  known  her.  The  rest  were 
less  than  names  to  him.  Occasionally  a  birth  or  a  death  or  a 
marriage  in  their  ranks  may  have  caused  some  of  them  to 
be  mentioned  in  his  presence,  but  his  mind  took  no  record 
of  what  did  not  appear  to  concern  him.  Other  children 
know  even  unseen  connections  by  their  birthday  presents, 
their  Christmas  cards,  their  Valentines,  messages,  and  the 
like;  but  happily,  or  unhappily,  David  and  Georgina  did 
not  know  other  children.  David,  relationless  to  all  in- 
tents and  purposes,  did  not  miss,  then,  what  he  was  not 
aware  that  he  lacked. 

Two  persons  only  were  there  of  all  who  had  been  or  were 
connected  with  him  of  whom  he  formed  any  clear  concep- 
tion. These  were  his  mother's  father  and  mother.  They 
had  died,  as  we  know,  long  before  he  had  been  born,  but  so 
often  did  his  mother  talk  to  him  of  them,  and  so  familiar 
was  he  with  the  'daguerreotypes'  of  them  which  accom- 
panied her  wherever  she  went,  and  of  the  later  photographs 
of  a  stern  yet  benign  old  gentleman  and  a  calm  but  very 
bright-eyed  old  lady,  that  it  would  not  have  been  difficult 
for  him  to  believe  that  he  had  known  them  in  the  flesh. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  59 

David,  trying  to  reconstruct  his  mother's  home  by  the  light 
of  the  daguerreotypes,  or  rather,  perhaps,  of  the  faded 
photographs,  could  never  quite  succeed.  He  could  see  a 
certain  distance,  but  beyond  that  all  was  dim  and  con- 
fused. He  could  see  his  grandparents,  his  mother  beside 
them;  but  never  their  curious  friends:  or,  more  accurately, 
he  could  never  see  his  mother  in  the  company  their  opinions 
drew  about  them.  How  came  she  at  all  in  that  galley?  By 
reason  of  her  parents  and  their  views.  But  how  came  they? 
That  always  stumped  him.  As  he  thought  of  them  they 
had  all  the  early  Victorian  virtues,  the  rigidities  even,  the 
kindly  primnesses.  Their  very  clothes  —  something  Quak- 
erish about  them  —  were  the  expression  of  the  rectitude 
of  disciplined  lives.  Were  the  influences  of  the  time  too 
strong  for  them?  David  did  not  think  so.  The  qualities 
were  inherent,  the  expression  of  them  no  mere  concession 
to  appearances.  Why  should  they  make  concessions,  more- 
over, who,  in  their  beliefs  which  were  honest,  made  none? 
They  were  content,  too,  to  suffer  for  their  beliefs.  No,  think- 
ing themselves  to  have  done  with  religion,  they  lived  re- 
ligiously because  they  were  religious  people.  Could  it  be, 
David  was  to  ask  himself,  that  there  were  Christians,  who 
did  not,  or  thought  they  did  not,  believe  in  Christ?  Were 
there  followers  who  did  not  believe  in  a  Leader?  Only  thus 
could  he  account  for  his  grandparents;  and  only  thus, 
assuredly,  could  he  account  for  his  mother. 

If  he  had  needed  to  account  for  her  —  nay,  as  if!  Noth- 
ing would  have  shaken  his  love  for  her;  nothing  ever  did. 
He  accepted  unquestioningly  —  as  unquestioningly  as  she 
had  accepted  his  father.  However  mistaken  she  herself 
may  have  come  to  see  or  to  believe  that  she  had  been,  she 
was  never  anything  but  wise  in  his  eyes,  never  anything 
but  good,  never  anything  but  altogether  lovely. 

In  his  mind,  later,  he  always  felt  that  it  was  of  such  a 
woman  that  it  was  written  that  her  price  was  above  rubies; 
that  her  children  arose  up  and  called  her  blessed. 

"Many  daughters  have  done  virtuously,  but  thou  excel- 


6o  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

lest  them  all"  —  it  took  the  words  of  the  Book  which 
she  was  supposed  to  reject  to  describe  her! 

But  that  was  just  it.  She  did  not  reject  it  —  did  not,  at 
all  events,  reject  its  teaching.  The  key  to  the  whole  mys- 
tery was  there.  Her  parents,  advanced  as  they  thought 
themselves,  had  not  rejected  it  either.  It  was  thus  that  her 
own  training  had  escaped  the  perils  which  might  have  be- 
set it;  thus  that  her  home  had  preserved  its  exemplary 
Victorian  atmosphere;  thus  that,  whatever  she  did  not 
teach  David  and  his  little  sister,  she  taught,  or  strove  to 
teach  them,  to  seek  peace  and  ensue  it,  to  love  righteous- 
ness and  to  hate  iniquity. 

Those  were  the  days  of  transition:  the  adjustments,  the 
compromises,  the  middle  way  generally,  not  then  arrived 
at,  for  such  as  supposing  the  old  order  discredited  knew  not 
where  to  set  about  the  search  for  the  new.  A  modus  vivendi 
had  yet  to  be  found  for  these.  It  may  be  that  David's 
parents  by  very  slow  degrees  were  finding  it,  and  that  in- 
sensibly it  was  leading  them  back  to  the  point  which  had 
seemed  the  parting  of  the  ways.  It  may  be  —  nay,  for 
David  (with  Betsy),  it  may  have  been  anything  at  all  ex- 
cept wickedness  of  any-kind-so-ever  upon  the  part  of  one 
of  them.  Perhaps  nobody  would  ever  quite  understand. 
David,  when  he  was  old  enough  to  do  so,  was  content  not 
to,  and  never  in  the  course  of  his  life  was  to  attach  any 
blame  to  her.  Not  quite  so  much  could  be  said  of  his  later 
attitude  towards  his  father.  The  wrong  done  to  his  mother, 
howsoever  willingly  endured,  howsoever  acquiesced  in, 
shared,  welcomed  even,  had  been  too  great.  The  wrong 
done  to  himself,  and,  in  a  far  lesser  degree,  to  Georgina, 
did  not  weigh  in  this  feeling.  The  sacrifice  had  been  his 
mother's  and  should  not  have  been  asked. 

And  yet  even  here  .  .  . 

Strangeness  everywhere. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

All  went  quietly  for  two  months,  for  even  three.  The 
days  lengthened;  winter  merged  gradually  into  spring. 
Homburg  began  to  put  on  a  different  air.  There  were  leaves 
presently  on  the  trees,  flowers  in  the  Kursaal  Gardens. 
Summer  would  be  here  soon  and  the  town  fill  up.  Then 
would  the  ways  be  thronged.  Groups  of  people  would 
gather  about  the  Springs  while  the  attendants  filled 
bunches  of  glass  mugs  —  so  many  to  the  handful.  David, 
who  knew  the  taste  of  the  Ludwigsbrunnen  quite  well,  and 
was  always  to  be  able  to  remember  it,  liked  to  see  the 
bunches  of  glasses.  The  glasses  in  these  clusters  clicked 
against  each  other  as  they  were  caught  up  by  their  handles 
and  dipped  with  a  soft  gathering  sound  into  the  gushing 
spring,  but  none  was  ever  broken.  Some  people  had  their 
own.  There  was  a  stall  at  which  you  could  buy  them  — 
every  sort,  from  plain  ones  like  those  which  were  supplied, 
to  beautiful  tall  ones  with  white  goats  dancing  upon  them. 
These,  David  would  have  told  you,  urging  you  to  buy, 
you  could  use  for  flowers.  You  could  buy  glass  tubes  too, 
to  drink  your  waters  through  —  striped  ones  if  you  liked. 
At  the  innocuous  Ludwigsbrunnen,  where  David,  in  com- 
mon with  other  children,  was  allowed  to  drink,  no  one  used 
tubes.  But  at  the  Elisabethenbrunnen  and  the  Stahlbrun- 
nen  and  the  Kaiserbrunnen,  severely  grown-up  springs 
which  no  children  ever  tasted,  you  had  to  —  Because  (as 
he  would  have  told  you  with  Betsy)  of  your  Teeth!  For 
years  any  discoloured  teeth  that  David  saw  he  attributed 
to  tubeless  drinking  at  one  of  the  stronger  springs.  Better 
to  have  been  careful  he  used  to  think  sagely !  Better  even 
to  have  been  contented  with  the  plain  tasteless  ordinary 
water  which  flowed  from  a  stone  lion's  mouth  near  the 
harmless  Ludwigsbrunnen,  and  with  which  he  himself,  at 


62  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Betsy's  ordering  discretion,  had  sometimes  most  unwil- 
lingly to  be  satisfied! 

There  were  other  things  to  be  bought  at  the  stalls :  paper- 
cutters,  the  handle  a  deer's  slender  shank  and  polished 
hoof,  the  blade  ivory,  or  brass  or  tortoiseshell ;  work-boxes 
with  painted  lids;  ornaments  made  of  black  horn  inlaid 
with  ivory  —  the  designs,  nearly  always,  stags  and  hinds 
and  fawns;  penholders  of  carved  bone  with  a  speck  of  glass 
at  the  opposite  end  from  that  which  held  the  nib  —  a  speck 
of  glass  upon  the  back  of  which  might  be  discerned  a  still 
minuter  speck  of  black,  which,  when  you  held  the  glass  up 
to  your  eyes  and  looked  through  it  to  the  light,  revealed 
itself  as  a  photograph  of  the  Kursaal  or  the  Gardens  or  the 
Bandstand,  to  your  infinite  admiration  and  wonder.  There 
were  books  of  views  —  strips  a  yard  and  a  half  long  which 
the  sellers  as  you  passed  would  shake  out  of  the  shining 
cardboard  covers  into  which  they  folded  so  neatly,  and  hold 
out  from  arm  to  arm  like  lengths  of  riband;  there  were 
laces;  fans;  silks;  there  were  Oriental  wares:  stuffs,  em- 
broideries, brasses;  there  was  jewellery  —  rings,  earrings, 
chains,  bracelets,  brooches;  and,  most  memorable  of  all, 
there  was  the  stall  of  the  cut  and  polished  stones.  That 
was  young  David's  stall  —  the  stall  of  the  red  agate,  of  the 
ringed  onyx,  where  his  father  had  bought  the  beads  for  his 
mother  (everybody  wore  such  things  then  and  thought 
them  beautiful!),  and  where  the  divine  marbles  were;  the 
marbles  the  very  click  of  which  was  different  from  that  of 
other  marbles,  as  well  it  might  be  since  they  were  them- 
selves of  agate,  red  or  ringed,  with  wonderful  lights  and 
veinings  and  transparencies  —  marbles  made,  if  you  please, 
of  '  precious '  stones ! 

These  things  were  not  yet  in  their  glory.  But  the  glory 
of  them  was  coming  with  the  coming  summer. 

Already,  after  the  stagnation  of  the  winter,  the  town 
shewed  signs  of  movement.  People  were  arriving:  Ger- 
mans mostly;  a  few  Italians  and  French.  The  English 
never  put  in  an  appearance  in  any  numbers  till  July  and 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  63 

August.  Landladies  were  bestirring  themselves.  Lucky 
ones,  like  Frau  Finkel,  had  achieved  winter  lettings,  but 
the  majority  looked  to  the  brief  season  for  the  harvest  of 
the  year.  The  hotels  began  to  restaff  themselves,  and  such 
as  had  been  closed  to  open  their  doors. 

It  was  now  that  David,  if  he  had  been  old  enough  to 
observe,  might  have  seen  the  anxious  look  begin  to  show 
itself  again  sometimes  in  his  mother's  eyes.  Afterwards  — 
but  many  years  afterwards  —  he  used  to  wonder  how  far 
his  father  had  seen,  how  far  he  had  been  conscious  of  what 
the  conditions  of  the  strange  position  cost  her.  .  .  . 

Was  it  the  very  calm  of  these  days  that  disturbed  her? 
Were  things  going  too  smoothly?  What  was  it  that  the 
awakening  of  the  town  threatened? 

Or  was  it  that  a  new  thought  was  finding  its  way  into  her 
mind?  Suppose  the  established  order  were  right?  The  old 
way  the  way  that  had  been  arrived  at  as  the  most  workable 
—  perhaps  the  only  workable  way?  The  experiments,  the 
siftings,  the  choosings,  the  discardings  and  rejectings  of  un- 
told ages  had  resulted  in  what  she  and  David's  father  had 
broken  away  from.  What  was  their  protest  worth  after 
all,  against  the  accumulated  teachings  of  un-numbered 
centuries? 

Sometimes  restlessness  possessed  her.  These  were  not 
the  days  of  the  active  woman.  Books,  needlework,  the  man- 
agement of  the  house,  the  gentler  arts  and  handicrafts, 
were  supposed  to  be  outlet  enough  for  the  activities  then, 
and  for  the  most  part  they  effected  their  purpose  admirably. 
Many  a  scrapwork  screen,  or  crocheted  set  of  doilies,  or 
length  of  embroidery,  was  the  outward  expression  of  feel- 
ings which  could  only,  now,  be  worked  off  by  strenuous 
physical  exercise.  Women  had  ceased  to  faint  and  had  not 
begun  to  scream.  It  is  not  probable  that  their  nature  has 
altered.  Less  was  permitted  to  them  —  by  each  other  — 
and  they  asked  for  less,  not  dreaming  that  anything  was 


64  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

denied  them.    David's  mother  may  have  become  dimh/ 
conscious  then  of  what  was  denied  her. 

Betsy  saw;  no  one  else  apparently.  She  knew  all  things; 
knew  through  brick  walls  when  her  mistress  could  not 
settle  to  any  of  her  usual  occupations;  when  her  work  was 
put  down,  and  taken  up  again,  and  again  put  down;  when 
her  hands  were  pressed  to  her  eyes;  when  she  paced  the 
room  in  spirit  as  when  she  paced  it  in  earnest.  She  would 
read  and  cease  reading.  She  would  play  and  cease  playing. 
Even  the  exercises  were  interrupted.  Something  was  go- 
ing to  happen.  Betsy  knew  as  well  as  if  her  mistress  had 
told  her  so,  that  this  was  what  her  mistress  was  thinking. 

Then,  almost  luckily,  David  fell  ill.  A  rash  on  his  little 
fat  chest.  Scarlatina?  Dreadful  thought.  Georgina  was 
separated  from  him  —  sent  down  with  Katinka  to  rooms 
downstairs  just  then  happily  vacant.  Small-pox?  Not  that 
sort  of  eruption.  Chicken-pox?  Not  that  either.  Nettle 
rash?  Something  he  had  eaten?  Ailments,  pains  especially, 
were  generally  that.  Measles?  Most  likely.  David  with  a 
headache  and  feeling  rather  sick  (and  dreadfully  sorry  for 
himself)  did  n't  mind.  What  he  did  mind,  over  and  above 
the  bodily  discomfort,  was  the  strange  doctor  who  could  n't 
say  yet.  He  had  to  put  out  his  tongue.  He  did  so.  But  he 
was  required  to  shew  his  throat  by  the  aid  of  a  paper-knife 
— one  of  the  black  horn  ones  with  the  white  stag  on  them, 
which  he  had  always  loved  and  which  he  would  never  be  able 
even  to  like  again,  A  tussle  over  this.  He  closed  his  teeth 
on  the  horrid  fiat  thing  which  pressed  his  tongue  down  and 
nearly  made  him  sick.  Why  could  n't  the  doctor  with  the 
long  black  beard  and  the  spectacles  let  him  alone?  He 
could  n't  shew  his  throat  if  they  made  him  sick.  He  hated 
the  doctor;  hated  his  beard;  hated  his  spectacles;  hated  the 
paper-knife.  The  worst  of  it  was  that  his  mother  and  Betsy 
took  the  doctor's  part;  took  even  the  part  of  the  paper- 
knife,  which,  from  being  a  nice  friendly  thing,  had  suddenly 
assumed  the  guise  of  an  instrument  of  torture. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  65 

"Let  the  doctor  look,  darling." 

Very  nearly  a  Scene  now.   Not  with  the  paper-knife. 

"Listen,  darling.  How  can  you  be  made  well  if  you  don't 
let  us  see  what's  the  matter  with  you?" 

David  did  n't  want  to  be  made  well.  He  wanted  to  be  left 
alone. 

"Now,  Master  David,  my  dear  .  .  ." 

"Opendemout  and  let  mesee.  I  do  not  hurt  you.  Just 
open  de  mout." 

Not  with  the  paper-knife. 

Three  people  round  the  stubborn  bed.  His  mother  whom 
he  trusted ;  Betsy  whom  he  trusted  too ;  the  doctor  whom  he 
did  not.  And  the  three  conspiring  against  him. 

"David!" 

"Master  David!" 

It  was  poor  Betsy  whom  he  turned  upon.  It  was  no  good 
Betsy's  being  Surprised.  (He  'would  have'  for  his  mother, 
but  he  would  not  for  Betsy  just  backing  up  the  horrid  black 
beard.)  He  pushed  Betsy  away;  pushed  her  away  with  his 
elbow;  turned  over  upon  his  face,  was  near  screaming, 
knew  he  was  being  naughty  and  did  n't  care. 

The  doctor  went  on  saying,  "Just  open  de  mout." 

He  would  n't' open  de  mout.  He  would  n't  even  show  the 
outside  of  it.  When  Betsy  with  gentle  force  turned  him 
over,  he  completed  the  revolution,  landing  upon  his  face 
again. 

Yes,  very  nearly  a  Scene.  Then  his  mother  whispered  to 
him.  He  lay  quite  still.  She  whispered  again.  Still  quite 
still. 

"David!"   A  different  sort  of  'David.' 

Very  slowly  he  turned  over. 

"Send  Betsy  away  then." 

"Poor  old  Betsy,"  said  Betsy,  and  went  to  the  other 
side  of  the  room. 

"Him  too." 

But  the  doctor  was  surely  the  point  at  issue. 

"Just  for  a  minute." 


66  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

The  doctor,  after  a  moment's  hesitation  on  the  part  of 
David's  mother,  was  informed  of  David's  wish.  He  and  his 
black  beard  and  his  spectacles  joined  Betsy  at  the  window. 

So  very  nearly  a  Scene !  Only  a  little  less  understanding 
on  the  part  of  one  of  the  three  and  it  must  have  become  one. 

"Now  I'll  show  you,''  said  David. 

It  was  all,  you  see,  the  question  of  the  paper-knife, 
David  could  show  his  throat  perfectly  without  it.  Even 
the  black  beard  and  the  spectacles,  called  over  from  the 
window,  had  to  admit  that  David's  tongue  did  not  get  in 
the  way. 

Measles.  But  only  and  most  suitably  —  and,  to  David's 
view,  since  Homburg  was  Germany,  most  naturally  —  the 
mere  German  kind. 

"What  we  call  in  England  German  Measles,"  his  mother 
said. 

"If  you  vish,"  said  the  doctor,  who  probably  did  not 
understand. 

After  that  David  rather  enjoyed  being  ill.  He  was  not 
very  ill,  and  he  was  very  important.  He  liked  being  in- 
fectious and  took  a  keen  interest  in  what  he  learned  to  call 
the  Precautions,  though  so  slight  were  precautions  in  those 
days  that  only  David's  pride  could  have  glorified  them  with 
a  capital.  No  carbolic  sheets  then  to  hang  over  the  doors 
and  catch  in  them  every  time  they  were  opened.  No  overalls 
for  infected  attendants,  with  bands  buttoned  close  at  the 
wrists.  No  immediate  washings  of  hands  that  had  minis- 
tered to  him.  But  just  a  keeping  away  of  Georgina  and  Ka- 
tinka,  a  desultory  separating  of  tainted  from  untainted  toys, 
a  certain  amount  of  talk,  and  the  occasional  donning  of 
a  mackintosh,  if  she  remembered  it,  upon  the  part  of  Frau 
Finkel  (a  man's,  by  the  way  —  left,  indeed,  by  a  former 
lodger),  when  she  looked  into  the  room  to  say,  "Veil  and 
how  feel  ve  dis  efening?"  —  or  "dis  morning,"  as  the  case 
might  be.  These  things,  however,  gave  David  great  satis- 
faction. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  67 

But  the  really  satisfactory  thing,  from  Betsy's  point 
of  view,  was  that  David's  little  illness  occupied  David's 
mother.  The  anxious  look  was  replaced  by  another.  Quite 
a  different  sort  of  anxiety  while  it  still  was  anxiety  —  be- 
fore the  doctor's  visit,  that  is  —  and  not  anxiety  at  all 
after  that;  just  happy  solicitude.  Let  Master  David  con- 
tinue ill,  Betsy  thought  (seeing  of  course  how  little  ill  he 
was),  and  let  her  mistress's  ministrations  in  the  sick-room, 
which  were  so  eminently  good  for  her,  continue  also. 
David,  his  bed  piled  with  the  infected  toys  (which,  it  was 
said,  were  duly  to  be  burnt  when  they  should  have  served 
their  purpose),  was  nothing  loath. 

Very  happy  days  the  ill  days.  Happier  still  when  Geor- 
gina  developed  German  Measles  too  —  an  attack  even 
milder,  more  German,  as  David  said,  than  David's  own  — 
and  the  two  had  no  longer  to  be  separated.  She  had  prob- 
ably, David  thought,  caught  hers  from  his  love  which  he  had 
sent  her  every  day  and  which  must,  after  all,  have  been 
infectious. 

It  seemed  unnecessary  now  to  keep  Katinka  out  of  the 
room  any  longer,  as,  if  it  was  fated  that  she  was  to  have  the 
malady,  she  must  certainly  have  contracted  it  by  this 
time.  So  Katinka,  Mrs.  Penstephen  having  sounded  her 
father  as  to  his  views,  was  added  to  the  happy  party. 

David  has  a  photograph  of  Katinka  to  this  day.  It  is 
easy  to  believe  that  the  possessor  of  the  pretty  smiling  face 
which  it  presents  brought  joy  into  the  strange  household, 
or,  at  the  least,  increased  the  sum  of  the  happiness  of  its 
members.  No  wages  could  adequately  have  represented 
her  value  to  the  growing  young  minds,  just  as  no  wages 
could  have  wiped  out  the  family  debt  to  the  incomparable 
Betsy.  Mrs.  Penstephen  at  closer  quarters  wi-th  her,  now 
that  for  so  long  at  a  stretch  the  walls  of  one  room  held  them 
both, — herself  and  Katinka,  —  realised  more  than  ever 
her  own  and  her  children's  good  fortune. 

And,  since  everything  that  occupied  her  mind  gently  was 
good  for  it  and  for  her,  Betsy  encouraged  her  to  talk  of 


68  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Katinka.  Mrs.  Penstephen  was  wondering  whether  the 
girl  would  come  to  her  permanently. 

"One  says  permanently,"  she  said  that  night  when 
Betsy  was  brushing  her  hair,  —  "I  mean  whether  she 
would  come  away  with  us." 

It  was  Betsy's  belief  that  Katinka  would. 

"What  she'll  do  when  our  time's  up  here,  or  what  she'd 
do  if  she  had  to  part  with  Master  David  and  Miss  Georgina, 
I  don't  know." 

"Her  father  may  want  her  at  home  or  have  other  views 
for  her." 

"She  may  have  views  of  her  own,  'm.  I  think  that 's  much 
more  likely.  I  should  ask  her  anyway." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  consulted  David's  father  and  did  ask 
her.  She  put  the  question  tentatively.  Supposing  they 
should  want  her,  she  said. 

Katinka  flushed  with  pleasure.  She  was  now  sleeping  at 
Frau  Finkel's.  Was  she  not  making  her  way?  She  re- 
membered how  at  first  Mrs.  Penstephen  had  hesitated 
about  taking  her  at  all.  Of  course  she  would  go.  She  even 
clapped  her  hands,  and  then  blushed  again  for  her  childish- 
ness. 

Mrs.  Penstephen  smiled  and  Katinka  felt,  as  she  always 
did  when  her  mistress's  smile  was  for  her,  that  she  would 
and  could  die  for  her  gladly. 

"We  must  think  about  it,  then.  There  would  be  your 
father  to  ask  and  also  to  consider." 

He  would  not  object,  Katinka  declared.  He  wished 
her  to  be  with  nice  people  —  a  distinguished  English 
family. 

"And  always  have  I  myself  vished  to  go  to  England." 

But  at  the  word  England  the  look  came  into  Mrs.  Pen- 
stephen's  face  which  Katinka  had  seen  in  it  at  the  first 
interview.  To  her  it  represented  withdrawal.  Again  she 
remembered,  but  with  diflferent  feelings  from  those  of  a  few 
moments  before  when  the  thought  had  come  to  her,  how 
Mrs.  Penstephen  had  hesitated  to  engage  her  —  nay,  had 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  69 

seemed  to  shrink  from  engaging  her.   All  her  elation  was 
suspended. 

"It  would  n't  be  England,"  Mrs.  Penstephen  said.  "We 
should  be  travelling.    I  don't  know  yet  where  it  would  be. 
But  it  is  almost  certain  that  it  would  n't  be  England." 
Katinka  dared  to  breathe  again.  ' 

"Anywhere,"  she  said.  "  It  is  my  wish,  yes,  to  see  Eng- 
land. But  anywhere.  I  should  like  to  travel.  Oh,  it  does 
not  matter  where.  Where  the  gracious  lady  is  that  is 
England  for  me." 

Nothing  was  settled,  but  it  began  to  be  felt  that  Katinka's 
place  in  the  family  was  no  longer  temporary  and  Katinka 
took  heart  of  grace.  What,  after  all,  could  hinder?  Mrs. 
Penstephen,  her  hesitation  apart,  seemed  to  wish  it.  The 
children  Katinka  was  sure  would  wish  it.  Fraulein  Betsy 
certainly  wished  it. 

"And  mind  you,  there  is  n't  many  girls  I  could  stand," 
Betsy  said  frankly.  "As  for  nursery-maids  generally, 
they're  more  plague  than  profit,  that  I've  always  consid- 
ered. But  you,  Katinka,  my  dear,  for  all  your  outlandish 
name  —  making  me  think  of  pots  and  kettles  to  mend  every 
blessed  time  I  say  it!  —  you  are  somehow  different,  now, 
are  n't  you?" 

"You  tink  I  shall  be  engaged?"  said  Katinka,  her  eyes 
shining. 

Betsy  only  said  "We  shall  see";  and  Mrs.  Penstephen 
continued  to  say  nothing  further.  As  the  days  went 
on,  however,  it  did  appear  to  be  assumed  all  round  that 
Katinka  was 'permanent.' 

Meanwhile  just  peaceful  busy  days  —  for  Mrs.  Pen- 
Stephen,  her  restlessness  over;  for  Betsy,  content  with  her 
observations;  for  Katinka,  waiting.  In  the  course  of  a 
very  few  the  children  in  turn  went  through  the  various 
stages  from  slops  to  solids;  from  being  allowed  up  for  an 
hour  to  being  up  in  earnest;  from  being  up  to  being  out. 


70  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

They  were  convalescent.  They  were  well.  Followed  the 
very  moderate  disinfectings  deemed  all  that  was  necessary: 
a  little  scrubbing,  a  little  burning  of  sulphur;  Frau  Finkel, 
even,  asked  no  more.  And  when  it  came  to  the  point  was  it 
really  necessary  to  burn  the  infected  toys?  Even  the  sensi- 
ble Betsy  said  All  Nonsense.  Even  Mr.  Penstephen,  the 
matter  referred  to  him,  said  he  did  n't  suppose  it  mattered. 
The  doctor  said,  "Oh,  just  put  dem  in  de  room  mit  de 
sulphur."  Yet  there  had  been  at  least  the  talk  about  Pre- 
cautions! 

Betsy  perhaps  hit  the  nail  on  the  head  when  she  said  And 
Besides. 

"Yes,  Betsy?" 

Betsy  looked  up  from  the  things  under  discussion:  a 
woolly  bear,  a  doll  with  curls,  some  coloured  picture-books, 
a  stuffed  elephant,  a  clown  that  played  cymbals  when  you 
pinched  his  rag  stomach,  a  dancing  nigger,  a  steam-engine, 
a  clock-work  mouse  and  a  humming-top  —  all,  with  the 
exception  perhaps  of  the  steam-engine  and  the  humming- 
top  and,  but  more  doubtfully,  of  the  nigger  and  the  clock- 
work mouse,  eminently  capable  of  harbouring  germs,  — • 
and  knocked  disinterestedness  out  of  all  precautions.  "You 
can't  catch  things  from  yourself  'm,"  she  said,  —  "not 
that  ever  I  've  heard  of,  and  it  is  n't  as  if  it  was  only  one  of 
them  had  had  it.  Why,  they've  both  had  their  measles. 
What  possible  need?" 

Well,  as  far  as  may  be  known,  the  spared  toys  did  no 
mischief,  and  in  course  of  time,  it  is  to  be  supposed,  became 
once  more  innocuous. 

For  the  rest,  the  calm  unthreatened  days  looked  like  to 
continue.  David's  mother  resumed  her  practising.  But 
the  dead  season  drew  to  an  end. 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  train  of  Mrs.  Penstephen's  thought  having,  as  we  have 
seen,  been  gently  interrupted,  something  no  longer  seemed 
about  to  happen.  Without  apprehension  or  anxiety  she 
saw  shutters  opened,  blinds  pulled  up,  the  occasional  but 
more  frequent  carriage  laden  with  luggage.  Nothing  was 
changed.  The  year  was  moving.  Then  why  was  her  mind 
easier?  That  the  blue  might  be  more  serenely  blue  from 
which  the  bolt  fell?  Almost  it  seemed  so. 

Nothing,  anyway,  could  have  been  bluer  than  the  sky. 
There  was  not  the  smallest  warning.  Less  than  none,  for 
what  shot  from  the  unclouded  azure  to  drop  at  her  startled 
feet  was  neither  more  nor  less  than  Katinka  —  poor  adoring 
Katinka  about  whom  in  this  connection  Mrs.  Penstephen's 
misgivings  were  now  as  if  they  had  never  been. 

David's  birthday  was  approaching.  He  was  to  be  Eight 
after  having  been  only  Seven  for  a  period  which  seemed  to 
him  quite  unjustifiably  long.  The  conditions  of  his  life 
tending  probably  to  sharpen  his  perceptions,  he  had,  in- 
deed, perhaps  been  eight  mentally  (if  not  nine  or  even  ten) 
for  a  considerable  time.  He  was  now  to  be  Eight  in  earnest. 
He  was  to  have  a  party  —  not  a  real  Party,  of  course,  since 
there  was  no  one  to  ask  to  it  —  but  a  party  of  sorts:  Ka- 
tinka's  brother  and  sister  to  tea  and  possibly  Anna  and 
Gretchen:  and  there  were  to  be  games  and  a  Surprise. 
Katinka  was  arranging  the  Surprise. 

For  days  the  Surprise  had  been  in  the  air.  A  mask  was 
part  of  it,  for  David  had  caught  a  glimpse  of  a  pink  shining 
face  lying  amazingly  upon  the  table  at  which  Betsy  did  her 
sewing,  before  Katinka,  pouncing  upon  it  with  a  little 
scream,  had  whisked  it  out  of  sight  and  hidden  it  away  in  a 
drawer.   But  what  the  whole  secret  was  neither  Katinka 


72  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

nor  Betsy,  who  was  in  it  (and  also,  indeed,  like  the  hidden 
mask,  was  somehow  part  of  it),  would  divulge.  They  spoke 
mysteriously  of  a  Distinguished  Guest  who  was  to  be  ex- 
pected at  the  party  —  but  not  till  after  tea  —  and  the 
rest  was  silence  and  evasions.  We,  who  are  more  than  eight 
or  nine  or  ten  but  have  been  all  three,  may  guess  perhaps 
at  our  old  friend  the  Dwarf.  David  exhausted  himself  in 
guessings  and  could  not  guess.  His  face,  we  may  suppose, 
was  set  towards  his  birthday. 

Blue  skies,  as  we  see;  and  under  them  tranquil  happy  ex- 
pectancy. David's  birthday  was  next  week;  David's  birth- 
day was  the  day  after  to-morrow:  David's  birthday  was 
to-morrow.  His  mother  found  herself  looking  forward  to  it; 
his  father,  even,  in  one  of  those  rare  moments  when  a  look 
perhaps  or  a  note  in  his  voice  made  sudden  amends  for 
everything,  said  there  was  something  in  anniversaries.  Not 
a  cloud,  not  the  shadow  of  a  cloud,  in  the  blue.  Then,  out 
of  the  tranquillity  a  mysterious  summons  to  Katinka  — 
a  note  from  her  father. 

Gretchen  had  brought  the  note  to  the  nursery  where  the 
nursery  dinner  was  in  progress.  Katinka,  'cutting  up'  for 
Georgina,  had  taken  it  with  wonder.  She  laid  down  the 
knife  and  fork,  and  Betsy,  that  the  meat  might  not  get 
cold,  drew  Georgina's  plate  toward  her  and  went  on  with 
what  Katinka  had  been  doing.  David,  as  curious  as  Ka- 
tinka herself  as  to  the  contents  of  the  letter,  found  time, 
none-the-less,  to  go  on  watching  the  work  of  the  cutting-up 
which  always  interested  him.  Betsy  held  the  knife  in  quite 
a  different  way  from  Katinka.  Katinka  sometimes  cut 
against  the  fork  in  a  way  that  would  have  been  said  to 
scratch  it  if  Frau  Finkel's  forks  had  been  silver;  Betsy 
never.  With  one  eye  on  Katinka  and  her  letter  and  the 
waiting  Gretchen,  who  probably  was  curious  too,  he  yet 
saw  how  Betsy  paused  in  the  cutting  to  push  a  little  bit  of 
fat  or  gristle  to  the  side  of  the  plate.  Georgina,  her  spoon 
in  her  hand  and  also,  it  is  to  be  admitted,  in  and  out  of  her 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  73 

mouth,  was  more  interested  just  then  in  the  food  that  was 
being  prepared  for  her  than  anything  else. 

"What  can  he  want?"  Katinka  said  blankly  when  she 
had  read  and  made  known  the  contents  of  her  father's  note. 
She  was  to  come  home  at  once.  No  explanation;  nothing! 

Betsy  asked  if  anybody  could  be  ill.  She  paused  in  her 
cutting,  and  Georgina  thumped  on  the  table  with  the  handle 
of  her  spoon.  Betsy  continuing  her  work  answered  herself 
with  "He'd  say,  sure  to,  if  any  one  was  ill,"  and  asked  who 
had  brought  the  note. 

Katinka  asked  Gretchen.  The  two  became  voluble  in 
German.  Betsy,  retaining  the  knife  and  fork,  gave  Geor- 
gina her  plate,  and  said  she  and  the  children,  at  any  rate, 
would  go  on  with  their  dinners. 

Katinka's  brother  had  brought  the  note  and  had  said 
nothing. 

"Then  nothing's  really  the  matter,"  decided  Betsy. 
"Have  your  own  dinner  and  go  round  directly  after." 

She  helped  Katinka  as  she  spoke,  and  Katinka  sat  down. 
Gretchen  stood  for  a  moment  or  two  to  join  in  the  expres- 
sion of  wonderings  and  speculations,  and  then  went  back 
to  the  kitchen.  Katinka  made  haste  with  her  meal  and 
presently  was  ready  to  go. 

"Shall  I  ask  Mrs.  Penstephen?" 

Betsy  shook  her  head. 

"They  won't  be  done  luncheon  and  you  won't  be  gone 
long.    I  '11  tell  her  I  gave  you  leave  to  run  round." 

Katinka  put  on  her  hat  and  coat  as  Gretchen,  reappear- 
ing, brought  in  the  nursery  pudding. 

"Back  in  few  minutes  den,"  said  Katinka.  She  nodded 
and  smiled  and  was  gone.  They  heard  her  tripping  lightly 
down  the  stairs. 

The  nursery  dinner  was  finished  and  cleared  away.  It 
was  then  two  o'clock.  The  children  would  go  for  their  walk 
at  three  o'clock.  Katinka  would  be  back  long  before  that. 
Betsy,  propping  East  Lynne  against  her  work  basket  so  that 


74  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

she  might  read  a  few  lines  from  time  to  time  as  she  worked, 
went  back  to  her  sewing.  David  and  Georgina  amused 
themselves  with  a  box  of  bricks  —  David  building,  Geor- 
gina demolishing.  David  builded  methodically  and  very 
carefully.  Georgina  knocked  down  even  when  she  pur- 
posed to  help.  "Look  out,"  sang  David  every  now  and 
then. 

Half  past  two  came;  a  quarter  to  three.  Five  more  min- 
utes and  it  would  be  time  to  begin  to  get  ready. 

What  could  be  keeping  Katinka?  The  grocer's  shop  was 
not  more  than  a  few  minutes'  walk.  The  hands  of  the  clock 
moved  on  to  the  hour. 

"Well,  we  must  go  without  her,"  Betsy  said  to  herself, 
and  called  the  children. 

"But  why  does  n't  Katinka  .  .  .  ?"  said  David.  Geor- 
gina echoed  his  question. 

"And  so  she  will,"  said  Betsy,  "by  the  time  we're  ready. 
Get  your  hat  now.  Master  David,  there's  a  good  boy. 
You'll  find  it  on  the  bed.  And  Miss  Georgie,  come  and  be 
dressed." 

The  children  were  presently  ready.  Betsy  herself  was 
ready.  She  buttoned  her  gloves.  Still  no  Katinka. 

And  then,  suddenly,  Katinka!  But  a  Katinka  whom 
David's  mother,  coming,  at  some  unaccustomed  sound,  out 
on  to  the  landing  to  see  if  anything  were  the  matter,  hardly 
recognised  —  a  sobbing  Katinka  with  a  face  swollen  and 
sodden  with  tears;  a  shaken  Katinka  who  flung  herself  on 
to  the  ground  and  clasped  her  mistress's  knees. 

David,  before  he  and  Georgina  were  urged  gently  but 
firmly  into  the  nursery  by  Betsy,  there  to  besiege  her  with 
questions  and  even  to  fight  against  their  temporary  im- 
prisonment, reproaching  her,  accusing  her,  saw  his  mother's 
face  grow  white  to  the  lips,  and  the  look  upon  it  which  he 
had  seen  there  at  Brussels. 

"What's  been  done  to  her?"  he  cried,  struggling  against 
his  own  tears.   "What  have  they  done?" 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  75 

But  he  could  hardly  have  told  whether  at  that  moment 
he  meant  to  Katinka  or  to  his  mother. 

Outside,  Mrs.  Penstephen  raised  Katinka  to  her  feet  and 
led  her  to  her  own  bedroom.  She  went  in,  pushing  the  girl 
gently  before  her,  much  as  Betsy  had  impelled  David  and 
Georgina  into  the  nursery :  and  then,  like  her,  shut  the  door. 

Katinka  threw  herself  again  to  her  knees,  sobbing  and 
rocking  her  body  to  and  fro. 

"Katinka,  you  must  n't,"  Mrs.  Penstephen  said. 

The  colour  was  slowly  coming  back  to  her  lips,  but  the 
look  which  Betsy  knew,  and  which  David,  young  as  he  was, 
knew  also,  and  which  David's  father  must  have  known  too, 
was  there  —  was  graven  there,  as  if  this  time  it  would  never 
wear  away  or  be  removed. 

Katinka  moaned  and  rocked  herself. 

"You  must  tell  me  what  has  happened,"  said  Mrs.  Pen- 
stephen.  "Try  to  calm  yourself." 

But  Katinka  only  moaned  and  wept  and  rocked  the  more. 

"  Katinka,  listen  to  me.  You  must  n't  give  way  like  this. 
Get  up  now  from  the  ground  and  come  and  sit  down  beside 
me  here.  You  must  control  yourself  or  I  can't  talk  to  you. 
That's  better.   No,  sit  down  beside  me.   I  wish  it." 

"Oh,  Madame,"  breathed  Katinka. 

Mrs.  Penstephen  drew  her  down  on  to  the  sofa.  Katinka 
gave  a  little  gulp,  and,  turning  away  her  head,  buried  her 
face  in  her  arm.  She  sobbed  for  a  few  moments,  but  more 
quietly. 

"You  are  so  good  to  me,"  she  said  brokenly  when  she 
could  speak.  "  I  have  been  so  happy.  Never  have  I  been 
so  happy  before." 

"You're  leaving  us,  are  n't  you,  Katinka?  It  is  that,  I 
think,  isn't  it?" 

But  now  again  Katinka  could  not  speak. 

Mrs.  Penstephen  waited.  Katinka  must  tell  her,  but 
already  she  knew  that  there  was  nothing  to  tell,  or  rather 
that  she  had  nothing  to  learn.   She  had  been  through  all 


76  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

this  before,  though  the  conditions  had  never  been  these. 
The  more  the  conditions  changed,  however,  the  more  what 
underlay  them  remained  the  same  thing.  She  sat  looking 
at  the  girl's  thick  hair  and  heaving  shoulders,  thinking  her 
own  thoughts. 

Presently  she  glanced  round  the  room.  A  large  square 
looking-glass  in  a  carved  gold  frame  hung  at  an  angle  upon 
the  wall  opposite,  and  in  it  she  saw  herself  and  Katinka. 
The  picture  she  saw  must,  if  she  could  have  seen  it  with 
later  eyes,  have  been  like  a  Millais  illustration  to  a  novel 
in  the  pages  of  a  magazine  of  that  date.  To  her  there  was 
nothing  odd  in  the  amplitude  of  her  draperies,  the  size  of 
her  jet  brooch,  or  the  abundant  trimmings  of  a  dress  which 
Betsy  considered  almost  too  simple.  What  did  seem  odd  to 
her  was  that  it  should  be  Katinka  who  wept  and  not  she. 
A  stranger,  she  thought,  would  have  seen  in  Katinka  a 
penitent  if  not  The  Penitent,  and  in  her  The  Confessor  or 
The  Counsellor.  A  Kind  Lady  gives  Advice  to  a  Young 
Girl  in  Trouble.  And  the  case  was  in  reality,  if  not  exactly 
the  reverse,  yet  almost  the  reverse.  It  was  she  who  had 
been  found  out,  she  who  should  be  the  suppliant,  she  whose 
head  should  be  bowed !  Tears  found  their  way  to  her  own 
eyes  but  she  blinked  them  back. 

"  I  ought  n't  to  have  taken  you,"  she  said.  "  I  did  hesi- 
tate. I  should  have  trusted  the  feeling  that  made  me  do 
this.  Or  I  ought  to  have  told  your  father.  Yet  I  could  not 
have  told  him.  No,  that  sounds  as  if  I  were  ashamed  of 
what  I  have  done.  And  that  would  n't  be  true."  She  paused. 
*'You  see  I  have  guessed,  Katinka,"  she  said  '  gently. 
"Your  father  has  learnt  that  according  to  accepted  ideas 
and  to  all  rites  —  civil  as  well  as  religious  —  Mr.  Penstephen 
and  I  are  not  married.    Is  n't  it  so?" 

"Ah,  Madame,  please  —  please — " 

But  the  relation  in  which  the  two  stood  to  each  other  — 
mistress  and  maid,  employer  and  servant  —  was  nothing 
to  David's  mother  just  then. 

"He  thinks  that  you  ought  n't  to  live  with  us." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  77 

"I  will  not  go,"  said  Katinka  vehemently.  "I  will  not. 
I  do  not  understand  but  I  know  you  are  good.  Oh  par- 
don, Madame,  that  I  should  even  speak  like  this.  You  had 
reasons.  It  is  enough  for  me.  Oh,  Madame  —  I  am  ashamed 
that  my  father  —  that  I  —  through  me  —  me  whom  you 
have  treated  so  kindly  —  Oh,  oh,  oh  — "  her  voice  trailed 
away  miserably  into  inarticulate  sobbings. 

"But,  my  child,  your  father  's  right.  It's  true  that  he 
does  n't  know  the  circumstances  in  which  the  step  was 
taken.  He  would  think  probably  that  there  were  obstacles 
in  the  way  of  our  marriage.  There  were  none.  What  we 
did,  we  did  openly.  We  dispensed,  that's  all,  with  forms  in 
which  we  did  n't  believe.  Whether,  if  either  of  us  had  quite 
foreseen  the  consequences,  we  should  have  had  the  courage 
of  our  views  I  —  sometimes  I  don't  know,  Katinka."  Her 
voice  shook,  and  she  paused  again  for  a  moment.  "  But  we 
did  what  we  thought  to  be  reasonable  and  —  and  right. 
No,  I  know  you're  not  asking.  Perhaps  that's  why  I  wish 
to  say  these  things  to  you.  But  actually  they're  beside 
the  point.  Your  father  is  right.  Thinking  as  he  does,  he 
could  n't  do  otherwise  than  wish  you  to  go  home.  It 
would  be  a  poor  sort  of  father  who  would  leave  his  child  in 
what  he  thought  to  be  danger.  You  would  n't  like  him  to 
be  indifferent." 

"No,  no,  but  I  am  so  ashamed.  If  he  knew  he  would 
understand.  He  does  not  understand.  It  is  that  that  you 
must  pardon.  But  oh,  I  cannot  go,  I  cannot.  And  I  thought 
perhaps  you  would  take  me  with  you  when  you  go  from 
Homburg."  She  had  been  speaking  in  German.  She  broke 
now  into  impassioned  English.  "Oh,  Madame,  if  you  vould 
overlook  dis.  My  father  by  himself  never.  It  is  dese  ladies, 
what  dese  ladies  have  said  to  him.  I  am  ashamed  for  him 
as  for  myself.  But  it  is  dese  ladies.  Oh,  why  did  dey  come 
to  make  us  all  so  unhappy?" 

"Some  ladies  told  him?" 

"De  ladies  who  vere  here  last  year  and  every  year  al- 
ready. Dey  have  always  de  great  suite  of  apartments  next 


78  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

door  to  us  —  in  de  big  house  at  de  corner,  and  dey  talk  vid 
my  father  as  dey  pass.  Dey  come  early  in  de  year  and  dey 
stay  for  de  season  after.  A  very  grand  lady  —  English  — 
de  Countess  of  Harbington." 

David's  mother  made  a  little  movement. 

"Lady  Harbington  is  in  Homburg?" 

"T'ree  days,"  said  Katinka. 

There  was  a  pause  before  either  spoke  then.  There  were 
sounds  outside:  the  opening  of  a  door  and  voices;  the  chil- 
dren's (protestant),  Betsy's  (quietly  authoritative).  Betsy, 
who  had  probably  guessed,  had  decided,  it  is  to  be  supposed, 
that  the  children  were  best  out  of  the  way,  and  was  taking 
them  for  their  walk.  She  was  having  some  difificulty.  "I 
don't  want  to  go  out,"  was  a  shout  that  penetrated  to  the 
bedroom.  There  was  the  sound  of  running  but  arrested 
footsteps,  and, "  No  you  're  not  to  go  to  your  mamma's  room, 
do  you  hear  me ! "  David  might  be  pictured  for  one  moment 
tugging  at  a  restraining  hand.  There  was  even,  perhaps, 
the  suggestion  of  authority  defied  and  a  scuffle.  Mrs.  Pen- 
stephen  rose  and  went  softly  to  the  door,  ready  to  lock  it, 
if  need  be,  or  to  go  out  on  to  the  landing  and  lend  Betsy  the 
support  of  her  presence.  But  David  contented  himself 
with  a  shout  for  Katinka  —  which  Georgina  was  heard  to 
echo,  and  which  sent  Katinka  back  to  her  sobbing  —  and 
presently  the  sounds  moved  their  location  and  died  away 
on  the  stairs.  The  hall-door  was  heard  to  close. 

Mrs.  Penstephen,  who  was  not  Mrs.  Penstephen,  went 
back  to  the  sofa  whence  Katinka  had  now  sunk  to  the  floor. 
There,  half-kneeling,  half-sitting,  the  girl  wept  into  the 
hollow  of  her  arm. 

Mrs.  Penstephen  sat  down  beside  her,  and  drew  her  head 
gently  on  to  her  own  knees.  She  was  such  a  child,  Katinka. 
She  soothed  her  now  as  one  soothes  a  child. 

"There,"  she  murmured.  "There.  There,  Katinka. 
You've  nothing  to  reproach  yourself  with.  That  must  be 
your  comfort.  I,  on  the  other  hand,  have.  Not  what  your 
father  thinks,  perhaps  —  certainly  not  what  Lady  Harbing- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  79 

ton  thinks.  I  ought  to  have  spoken  to  your  father  privately 
before  I  engaged  you.  He  would  then  have  had  the  choice 
of  letting  you  come  to  me  or  not  as  he  thought  best.  You 
can  tell  him  that  I  don't  think,  whatever  he  may  have 
heard  of  us,  that  we  have  done  you  any  harm,  and  you 
can  tell  him  that  I  am  very  sorry  to  lose  you.  You've 
been  a  good  girl,  and  perhaps  more  useful  to  my  children 
than  I  even  know  myself,  yet.  But  you  must  go,  Katinka," 
"To-day?" 
"Now." 

"Oh,  Madame.  Now?  Now?" 
"Before  the  children  come  back." 

Well,  it  was  a  day  of  tears.  David's  mother  herself  was 
crying  before  all  was  over.  With  streaming  eyes  Katinka 
packed  her  little  box.  The  things  which  she  had  brought 
from  home  with  such  joy  when  she  had  come  to  Frau 
Finkel's  to  sleep  would  go  back  wetted  with  her  tears.  She 
had  to  hurry,  too,  lest  the  children  should  come  in  from 
their  walk. 

"  Dey  vill  miss  me.  Oh,  tell  me  dey  vill  miss  me. "  She 
took  a  last  look  round.  She  opened  a  drawer  and  drew 
forth  a  shining  pink  mask.  "Oh,  de  Dvart  —  de  Dvart  for 
de  party  to-morrow.  Who  vill  do  de  body  and  de  legs  of 
de  Dvart?" 

Mrs.  Penstephen  smiled. 

"The  Dwarf?  "  she  said.  "  I  believe  we  shan't  have  much 
heart  ourselves  for  the  party  to-morrow,  Katinka." 
"Oh,  but  Herr  David.   He  must  have  his  party." 
"  I  will  help  Betsy,  then.   I  promise  you.  Master  David 
shall  have  his  party." 

"Katinka  vill  be  here  in  de  spirit,"  said  Katinka.  "No 
one  vill  see  her.  But  dat  is  just  as  veil,  for  if  dey  could  see 
her  she  vould  be  veeping." 

She  put  away  the  mask  in  its  hiding-place  and  closed  the 
drawer. 

"What  had  they  said  of  us?"  Mr.  Penstephen  asked 


8o  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

David's  mother  in  the  course  of  the  long  talk  that  fol- 
lowed. 

"What  would  they  say,  John?  I  did  n't  ask  Katinka.  I 
don't  quite  know  what  occurred.  They  take  an  interest  in 
the  family.  They  probably  asked  Katinka's  father  about 
her,  and  heard  that  she  was  in  a  situation  with  nice  English 
people.  Very  distinguished,  perhaps.  A  gentleman  and  a 
lady,  a  little  boy  and  a  little  girl.  Penstephen  the  name.  If 
they  said  that  we  had  been  turned  out  of  a  hotel  in  Brussels 
it  would  be  true.  John,  John,  I  can't  bear  it.  I  thought 
I  could,  but  I  can't.  Outcasts.  David.  My  baby.  Every 
one  pointing  at  us.  Shrugging  their  shoulders.  Turning 
their  backs.  My  children's  mother  like  a  woman  of  the 
streets.  Wanderers  all  of  us.  Branded.  Dwellers  on  suffer- 
ance. Our  own  people,  strangers,  the  very  servants.  It 
will  kill  me,  John.  I  'm  done.  I  can't  face  it  any  more.  I 
can't  go  on  .  .  ." 

Like  Katinka's  her  voice  trailed  away  to  inarticulate 
miseries. 


CHAPTER  X 

No  distinguished  stranger  came  to  David's  party.  There 
was  no  party  to  come  to.  Betsy's  mistress  was  ill;  Betsy, 
single-handed  now,  too  busy  to  think  of  parties,  and  with 
divided  cares  as  nurse  and  nurse,  far  too  busy  to  think  of 
impersonating  the  head,  trunk,  legs,  and  feet,  or  even  the 
less  responsible  hands  and  arms  of  dwarfs,  to  please  any 
one,  birthday  or  no  birthday.  So,  to  herself  poor  exercised 
Betsy.  Her  heart,  bleeding  for  her  mistress,  bled  in  neces- 
sarily smaller  measure  for  David.  But  it  was  because  it 
did  so  copiously  bleed  that,  to  the  children  that  day, 
she  seemed  cross  when  in  reality  she  was  only  grieved  and 
grieving. 

For  David  the  world  seemed  to  have  collapsed  about 
him.  With  Katinka  mysteriously  gone,  his  mother  sud- 
denly ill,  and  the  stuffing  knocked  out  of  his  birthday,  the 
day  was  dark  indeed.  The  shadow  of  the  sick-room  was 
upon  the  nursery,  whither  borrowed  Gretchen,  amiable, 
but  wholly  incompetent  after  competent,  wonderful  Ka- 
tinka, brought  her  sewing  that  she  might  watch  over  Betsy's 
charges  and  leave  Betsy  free  to  minister  to  her  suffering 
lady.  David  and  Georgina  played  half-heartedly  with 
David's  birthday  presents. 

But  the  shadow  of  more  than  the  sick-room  was  over  the 
house.  The  inevitable  talk  was  going  on  downstairs. 
Gretchen,  though  she  smiled  and  smiled,  probably  felt  she 
was  missing  it.  There  were  visitors,  of  course,  in  the  kitchen. 
Betsy,  super-sensitive  perhaps,  knew  every  time  that  a 
door  was  opened  and  shut.  Oh,  Frau  Finkel  was  friendly 
enough.  She  would  not  encourage  gossip,  but  Frau  Finkel 
was  human,  and  Betsy  knew  landladies.  She  knew  Down- 
stairs, too,  all  the  world  over.  Was  it  any  wonder  that,  to 
David  with  a  birthday  and  Georgina  too  young  to  under- 


82  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

stand  anything,  she  seemed  cross  when  she  was  only  heart- 
sick and  on  edge ! 

What  ailed  David's  mother?  She  lay  white  and  wide- 
eyed  in  the  bed  gazing  at  the  ceiling  and  moaning  faintly 
when  she  stirred.  The  strength  seemed  to  have  gone  out  of 
her.  She  was  like  one  who  has  had  a  paralytic  stroke,  but 
she  had  not  had  a  stroke.  Her  mind  seemed  elsewhere  and 
yet  to  be  feverishly  occupied.  Her  lips  moved  sometimes, 
and  Betsy,  as  if  the  secret  of  the  illness  might  be  learnt 
from  the  sufferer  herself,  tried  in  vain  to  catch  the  words 
she  did  not  speak.  She  might  have  been  asleep  and  dream- 
ing but  though  her  state  had  succeeded  to  sleeplessness 
she  was  not  asleep.  The  Beard,  the  first  of  the  doctors  to  be 
called,  said  she  had  had  a  Shoke  —  did  not  even  say  that 
she  must  have  had  one.  Every  one  in  the  house  knew  the 
nature  of  the  shock  which  the  poor  lady  had  sustained,  and 
it  was  Anna  who  had  been  sent  for  him.  The  second  opin- 
ion confirmed  his.  It  was  accepted  that  Mrs.  Penstephen 
was  suffering  from  shock  —  which  may  have  accounted  for 
her  condition,  but  did  not  very  clearly  explain  it.  Betsy 
saw,  however,  that  it  was  not  her  mistress  only  who  had 
had  a  shock.  Her  exercised  eyes  were  drawn  to  her  master 
again  and  again  from  the  bed. 

All  day  Mrs.  Penstephen  lay  in  the  same  state.  It  was 
impossible  to  say  whether  she  was  actually  suffering.  Mr. 
Penstephen  went  in  and  out.  It  was  he  now  who  could  settle 
to  nothing.  Neither  his  books  nor  his  writings  could  hold 
him.  No  question  as  to  whether  he  was  suffering!  Betsy's 
heart  shed  some  of  its  blood  for  him  too.  But  it  was  all  his 
own  fault  —  nay,  it  was  that  it  was  his  own  fault!  She 
could  have  shaken  him,  and  felt  also  that  she  could  have 
wept  for  him. 

"  Is  she  better,  Betsy?  Is  she  in  pain?  Does  she  know  us, 
do  you  think?  Does  she?  Do  you,  Mary?  Mary  darling, 
don't  you  know  me?  Don't  you  see  me?  It's  John.  Don't 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  83 

you  hear  me?  Look  at  me.  I'm  here  beside  you.  Mary, 
Mary." 

She  made  no  sign,  unless  a  movement  of  her  head —  was 
it  ever  so  Httle  from  side  to  side?  —  was  a  sign.  Was  she 
denying  him?  Refusing  to  Hsten  to  him?  Refusing  to 
comfort  or  be  comforted. 

Betsy,  as  much  for  his  sake  as  for  her  mistress's,  said 
now:  "I  would  n't  sir,  I  think.  Really  I  would  n't.  I'd  let 
her  be.  We  must  give  the  medicine  time.  Sedatives  they 
said  —  just  something  to  calm  the  nerves.  They  're  not 
alarmed  about  her.  I  'd  go  out  a  bit,  sir,  if  I  might  advise." 

"  How  can  I  go  out?"  said  Mr.  Penstephen. 

"I  would,  though,"  said  Betsy.  "I'd  go  out,  sir,  and 
come  back  and  maybe  find  her  better.  The  doctor 's  coming 
again  this  evening,  did  n't  he  say?  I  dare  say  he  would  n't 
expect  much  change  till  later."  (She  was  contradicting 
herself,  as  indeed  she  perceived,  but  that  did  not  seem  to 
her  just  then  greatly  to  matter  —  or  even  to  matter  at  all 
so  long  as  she  went  on  talking  that  he  might  not  talk.)  "So 
there 'd  be  plenty  of  time,  and  it  would  do  you  good,  sir." 

But  he  would  not  be  persuaded. 

"  Do  they  know  what's  the  matter  with  her?  Do  you?" 

Betsy  did  not  answer. 

"Have  you  ever  seen  any  one  like  this  before?" 

"Bless  you,  yes,  sir."  She  sought  about  for  an  instance, 
and,  not  finding  one,  took  refuge  in  "  If  it  was  you,  sir,  or 
any  male,  I  should  be  more  anxious." 

"But  she's  never  been  hysterical,"  he  said  after  a  pause 
—  "never  shown  the  smallest  sign  of  any  weakness  of  that 
sort.  She  hysterical!   It's  not  to  be  thought." 

"No,  sir.  But  that  would  not  put  it  out  of  the  question. 
And  it  would  n't,  perhaps,  be  weakness  anyway.  What 
doctors  know  is  only  enough  to  tell  them  that  they  can't 
know.  No  man  could,  sir,  —  gentle  or  simple,  —  and  you  '11 
excuse  me  for  speaking  so  free.  We  know,  sir,  but  if 
you  ask  us,  we're  done!  It  would  be  a  clever  woman  who 
could  tell  you.  No,  sir,  not  weakness  —  not  necessarily. 


84  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Differentness  I  should  call  it.  But  my  mistress  will  come 
out  of  this  you'll  see." 

Mr.  Penstephen  heard  her  attentively.  She  had  n't  done 
with  him;  she  did  n't  mean  to  be  done  with  him  just  yet. 
But  this  was  not  the  moment. 

"If  I  could  know  that  she  was  n't  sufTering." 

He  was  so  entirely  at  her,  Betsy's,  mercy! 

"It's  like  when  you  groan  under  laughing-gas,  sir.  You 
cry  out,  perhaps,  but  you  don't  know  about  it." 

She  wanted  him  to  go.  She  wanted  to  have  her  mistress 
to  herself  if  only  that  she  might  put  her  arm  round  her, 
as  you  put  your  arm  about  a  child,  and  try  to  get  com- 
fort through  to  her.  She  thought  she  could,  far  off  as 
the  troubled  spirit  seemed,  if  she  could  but  have  her  to 
herself. 

"Take  Master  David,"  she  said  at  last.  "After  all  it  is 
the  poor  child's  birthday." 

That  settled  it.  Mr.  Penstephen,  who  would  not  for  his 
own  sake,  would  for  David's.  Gretchen  was  told  to  get 
him  ready. 

"I  get  myself  ready,"  said  David. 

David  had,  it  is  to  be  feared,  an  uncomfortable  walk. 
His  father  talked  to  him  with  wandering  attention  or  did 
not  talk  to  him,  and  David,  sensitive  to  influences,  did  not 
know  which  was  most  disconcerting.  Moreover,  walking 
down  what  Betsy  called  the  Chr\'salis  Strasse,  they  walked 
so  fast  that  David  had  difficult^'  in  keeping  up.  He  was 
wondering  when  his  father  would  see  that  he  was  setting  a 
pace  which  would  oblige  his  own  shorter  legs  to  run  if  he 
was  to  maintain  it,  when  his  father  suddenly  became  aware 
of  his  case. 

"David,  my  boy,  I  was  forgetting  you." 

David  had  to  say,  "Oh,  it's  all  right,  Father,"  though  it 
had  been  nothing  of  the  sort. 

"You  set  it,  David.   I'll  keep  pace  with  you." 

"No,  you.  Father." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  85 

"This  about  right?  Change  step.  There,  that  bet- 
ter?" 

It  was  —  if  David's  father  would  only  have  remembered, 
but  in  five  minutes  David  found  himself  breaking  into  a 
trot  once  more. 

Talk,  pace,  atmosphere,  all  equally  disturbed.  But 
through  the  uncomfortableness  he  was  somehow  conscious 
of  something  which  seem.ed  to  bring  his  father  nearer  to 
him,  or  to  bring  him  nearer  to  his  father,  than  ever  before. 
It  was  not  exactly  what  was  said,  or  what  was  not  said  in 
the  frequent  embarrassing  silences.  It  went  deeper  than 
talk  or  than  silences.  If  he  could  have  put  what  he  dimly 
felt  into  words  at  all,  he  would  have  said  that  he  knew  for 
the  first  time  that  his  mother  was  in  both  of  them  —  and 
have  meant  much  more  than  that  for  the  moment  she  was 
in  the  mind  of  each  of  them.  His  mother  was  part  of  his 
father  as  she  was  part  of  himself.  His  father  was  thus  a 
more  intimate  relation  than  he  had  hitherto  supposed  him. 
No  words  however  for  any  of  this.  These  things  were  feel- 
ings. You  hardly  spoke  of  them  even  if  you  could. 

The  walk  was  marked  by  one  incident.  Near  the  Kursaal 
they  passed  two  ladies,  who  sat  upon  a  seat,  and,  by  the 
spread  of  their  draperies  and  something  of  importance  in 
the  aspect  of  at  least  one  of  them,  contrived  to  make  it 
look  like  a  throne.  They  seemed  to  be  arguing  —  not  per- 
haps about  anything  in  particular.  The  impression,  indeed, 
which  an  acute  observer  would  have  got  would  probably 
have  been  the  true  one:  that  they  argued  because  argu- 
ment was  the  form  which  any  conversation  between  them 
naturally  assumed.  As  they  wrangled,  the  important  one, 
who  had  a  parasol  with  a  green  silk  fringe,  and  whose 
cheeks  were  very  pink,  and  who  wore  primrose  kid  gloves 
and  many  bracelets,  looked  about  her.  With  calm  eyes, 
and  without  relaxing  her  part  in  the  argument,  she  took 
stock  in  an  impersonal,  aloof  sort  of  way,  of  all  who 
passed. 


86  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"But  that's  what  I  say,  you  spoke  without  thinking. 
You  always  do." 

David  could  hear  quite  well  as  he  approached  with  his 
father. 

"I  know  I  do,  dear,  but  in  this  case  I  did  n't.  Besides 
I  don't  think  I  do,  and  even  if  I  did  — " 

"I  don't  suppose  you  know  whether  you  did  or  did 
not—" 

The  words  that  fell  on  his  Hearing  ear  are  of  no  special 
significance.  We,  no  more  than  he,  are  to  know  what  the 
ladies  were  discussing,  though  with  him  we  may  allow  our- 
selves to  wonder.  But  what  was  significant  was  that,  the 
calm  impersonal  eye  of  the  one,  and  the  suffused,  deprecat- 
ing eye  of  the  other,  resting  upon  the  approaching  pair  at 
the  same  moment,  the  ladies  simultaneously  nudged  each 
other,  and  even  ceased  speaking. 

David  saw.  David  recognised.  David's  father,  occu- 
pied with  his  own  thoughts,  did  not  see.  David  could  not 
have  told  why  he  did  not  tell  him,  but  he  did  not,  either 
then  or  afterwards;  and  in  this  curious  day,  this  strange 
eighth  anniversary  of  his  birthday,  this  reticence  of  his  took 
its  place  amongst  the  odd  intangible  things  which  seemed 
to  bind  him,  or  seemed  like  to  bind  him,  more  closely  to 
his  father.  The  shared  secret,  the  unshared  secret  —  which 
shows  sometimes  most  understanding?  What  could  it  have 
been  which  held  him  back  from  speaking  of  what  he  had 
seen?  Shyness?  The  uncomfortableness  of  the  uncomfort- 
able walk?  Or  some  vaguely  protective  instinct?  This,  one 
would  say,  for  such  binding.  But  was  it  possible?  David 
looking  back,  did  not  know. 

Betsy  meanwhile,  alone  with  her  mistress,  watching, 
tending,  ministering,  had  a  mind  which  was  not  idle.  Betsy 
could  see  into  the  heart  of  things  and  into  the  hearts  of 
people.  Betsy,  who  had  achieved  the  piano,  might,  with 
such  powers  of  achievement,  be  counted  on  not  to  stop  at 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  87 

pianos.  It  was  as  she  looked  from  the  bed  to  her  master 
that  she  had  seen  suddenly  the  lever  which  her  mistress's 
illness  had  placed  in  hands,  which,  untutored  as  they  were, 
she  had  not  often  found  to  fail  her.  There  was  help  for  her 
moreover  in  this  very  connection.  For  if  the  Finger  of  God 
had  been  discernible  as  she  believed  in  David's  trifling 
illness,  nothing  less  than  the  whole  Divine  Hand  (we  are 
talking  of  hands !)  was  to  be  perceived  in  the  more  serious 
illness  of  David's  mother.  Betsy's  anxiety  thenceforward 
was  tempered  by  hope. 

She  was  not  less  anxious.  She  who  knew  what  the  strain 
had  been,  knew  also  now  what  the  strain  must  have  been. 
The  accumulated  sufferings  of  years  were  expressing  them- 
selves in  this  present  suffering.  It  is  unlikely  that  Betsy  had 
heard  of  the  Death  of  the  Thousand  Cuts.  But  she  had 
heard  of  breaking-point  (nearer  the  mark,  perhaps)  and  of 
last  straws  and  the  like,  and  it  was  breaking-point  which  her 
long-suffering  mistress  had  reached.  Strange  that  the  last 
straw  should  have  been  supplied,  howsoever  indirectly,  by 
Katinka! 

Presently,  thinking  busily  as  she  sat  by  the  sufferer, 
Betsy  saw  that  it  could  only  have  been  supplied  by  one 
who  loved  her,  or  for  whom  she  had  regard.  It  had  to  be 
Katinka,  then,  — poor  aching  Katinka.  Poor,  though? 
Poor?  Katinka,  who  adored  where  she  had  overwhelmed, 
would  not,  could  she  know,  have  thought  so.  Blessed 
rather.  Yes,  blessed  so  to  have  been  chosen,  though  she 
never  should  know  of  her  blessedness ! 

"I  should  see  to  it  that  she  did  know,"  Betsy  promised 
herself,  however,  and  went  on  with  her  thinking.  This 
might  be  Shoke  as  the  doctors  called  it;  they  were  wise 
enough  (with  Betsy!)  to  know  that  it  was  not  a  stroke.  It 
was  the  nervous  imitation  of  a  stroke  —  overstrained  na- 
ture's counterfeit  of  something  which  had  actually  been 
escaped.  To  all  seeming  Mrs.  Penstephen  was  slightly 
paralysed,  but  it  was  only  in  seeming.  Presently,  Betsy 
believed  firmly,  the  arrested  faculties  would  resume  their 


88  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

functions;  the  wandering  spirit,  like  the  dove  to  the  ark, 
would  come  back  to  the  body,  the  light  of  consciousness 
shine  freely  in  the  clouded  open  eyes. 

From  time  to  time  the  low  moaning  sound  came  from 
the  bed  —  the  moaning  which  had  so  distressed  David's 
father, 

"What  is  it,  dearie,  'm?"  Betsy  would  murmur  —  the 
*  'm,*  even  in  her  solicitude,  for  respect,  and  to  qualify  the 
'dearie'  which  she  could  not  help.  "What  is  it  dearie,  'm? 
Anything  we  can  do  for  you?  Anything  you'd  like?  Is  it 
your  poor  head?"  (It  was  the  'Where  does  it  hurt?'  to  a 
bruised  child!)  "Aching,  is  it?  No,  'm,  you  can't  tell. 
Aching  all  over,  perhaps  —  and  tired.  Oh,  tired,  I  know. 
There.  Betsy's  hand 's  cool  —  if  it  is  n't  too  rough?"  She 
laid  a  hand  tenderly  on  the  low  beautiful  forehead.  "There, 
my  darling.  There,  is  that  better?  " 

As  to  a  child.  But  the  right  way,  surely,  in  that  sick- 
room. Betsy  knew  —  seemed  to  know  by  instinct.  There 
was  a  crooning  quality  in  her  voice  when  she  spoke  thus  — 
the  children  knew  it  well,  and  sick  or  sorry  or  sleepless,  had 
often  responded  to  it  —  and  her  hand  could  lull  pain. 
Something  did  get  through  perhaps  to  the  wounded  spirit. 
The  moaning  grew  less. 

"There,"  she  said,  "there."  She  might  have  been  put- 
ting their  mother  to  sleep  as  so  often  she  had  put  them. 

Less  than  an  hour  brought  Mr.  Penstephen  and  David 
back.  David  begged  to  be  allowed  to  see  his  mother,  but 
Betsy  said  no.  She  went  in  to  tea  in  the  nursery  while 
David's  father  sat  with  her  mistress,  and  answered  protest- 
ing questions  as  best  she  could.  David  would  be  able,  she 
hoped,  to  see  his  mother  next  day. 

Not  to-day  at  all? 

Not  to-day  at  all. 

David's  face  fell.  More  than  anything  in  the  world  he 
wanted  to  see  his  mother. 

"Now,  if  you're  going  to  be  a  spoiled  boy — "  began 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  89 

Betsy.  Which  shewed  that  the  strain  was  beginning  to 
tell  upon  her.  She  was  supposed  to  be  cross,  we  must  re- 
member. 

David's  answer,  old  as  he  was,  was  to  burst  into  tears. 
Which  shewed  how  the  strain  told  on  him. 


CHAPTER  XI 

The  lights  were  low  in  the  sick-room  where  Betsy  sat,  doz- 
ing a  little  sometimes,  but,  even  when  she  dozed,  alert  for 
the  smallest  sound  or  movement  in  the  bed.  She  had  re- 
fused to  go  to  her  own,  —  to  give  up  her  place  by  her  mis- 
tress to  any  one.  A  pretty  pass  if  an  able-bodied  woman  of 
her  years  could  n't  do  without  rest  for  a  night!  Besides, 
she  would  be  resting.  At  six  o'clock,  since  Frau  Finkel  was 
so  kind,  she  would  cede  the  chair  to  her  and  go  and  lie  down 
for  an  hour  or  two,  but,  meanwhile,  with  the  pillow  which 
Anna  had  fetched  for  her,  she  would  do  very  well.  Tired? 
She  was  n't  tired.  It  was  n't  as  if  there  was  anything  to  do. 
All  that  she  had  to  do  was  just  to  be  there  doing  nothing, 
and  to  give  the  patient  her  medicines  and  nourishments  at 
the  proper  times. 

"Good-night  to  you  all,"  she  said  three  or  four  times 
before  she  could  rid  herself  of  willing  helpers. 

"  If  you  vant  anyting  in  de  night,  you  touch  debell,  von't 
you?  I  sleep  so  lightly,  I  hear  de  moment  you  ring.  Hot 
vater  or  anyting  like  dat,  you  can  have  in  few  minutes 
already.  Or  de  doctor  —  You  have  matches,  yes?  And 
de  candle?  And  spirit  for  de  aetna?" 

"Everything,"  said  Betsy.  "If  I  want  more  than  that 
I'll  ring,  I  promise  you." 

So  she  got  rid  of  them.  Mr.  Penstephen  was  the  last  to 
go.  He  was  sleeping  in  the  dressing-room  at  the  end  of  the 
passage.  To  him,  too,  she  had  said  good-night.  But  that, 
perhaps,  was  not  more  than  a  matter  of  form. 

He  had  come  back  at  one  o'clock.  Mrs.  Penstephen  was 
quiet  —  not  moaning,  but  her  eyes  were  open  as  before, 
and,  though  he  bent  over  her,  she  did  not  appear  to  see  him. 
He  went  out  abruptly.  He  had  come  back  at  two  o'clock. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  91 

There  was  no  change.  She  had  taken  the  hot  milk  which 
had  been  ordered  her. 

"She  takes  nourishment  as  good  as  gold,"  Betsy  said. 
It  seemed  impossible  to  get  away  from  that  way  of  speak- 
ing —  as  of  a  child,  or  to  a  child.  A  sick  person,  but  more 
especially  this  one,  was  a  child  to  Betsy  —  and  a  sick  child 
at  that.  Nothing  much  was  said  and  Mr.  Penstephen  went 
away  as  before. 

With  his  last  going  the  house  had  seemed  to  become  very 
still.  In  the  small  hours  the  night  grew  chilly,  and  Betsy, 
moving  very  gently,  put  more  wood  on  the  fire  in  the  stove. 
There  were  no  sounds  from  the  street.  It  was  now  that 
Betsy  sat  most  still.  Dozing  and  waking,  waking  and 
dozing,  she  sat  in  the  big  chair.  .  .  . 

"It's  no  good,  Betsy,  I  can't  sleep." 

It  was  Mr.  Penstephen  again  at  the  door.  He  closed  it, 
and,  putting  down  his  candle  on  a  table  at  hand,  came  over 
once  more  to  the  bed.  Betsy  had  risen  and  they  stood  on 
each  side  of  it,  looking  down  at  the  motionless  figure.  The 
moment  for  which  Betsy  had  waited  was  coming. 

"If  she  would  close  her  eyes,"  Mr.  Penstephen  said. 
"The  open  eyes  that  don't  see  .  .  ." 

He,  like  Betsy  before  him,  laid  a  cool  hand  upon  the  low 
smooth  forehead.  He  bent  down  and  laid  his  face  against 
the  face  upon  the  pillow. 

Betsy  did  not  speak.  She  saw  the  broad  shoulders  move, 
and  waited. 

"What's  to  be  done?"  he  said  at  last. 

"Nothing  now,"  she  said  slowly. 

"How  do  you  mean,  nothing?"  he  asked,  and  because 
he  was  frightened  he  sounded  angry. 

Betsy  nodded  her  head  and  repeated  the  words. 

"But  what  do  you  mean? "  he  asked  her.  "  Why  do  you 
say  'now'?  You  don't  mean  that  something  ought  to  have 
been  done  and  was  n't!  You  don't  think  —  Betsy!" 

"No,  sir.  Everything  is  being  done  that  can  be.  Nothing 


92  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

more  can  be  now.  It's  only  now  that  nothing  can  be 
done." 

"  I  suppose  you  '11  tell  me  what  you  do  mean  presently," 
said  Mr.  Penstephen  helplessly. 

Betsy  looked  him  full  in  the  face. 

"My  mistress  will  come  out  of  this,"  she  said  as  she  had 
said  earlier.   "It'll  be  then,  sir." 

There  was  a  pause  during  which  the  two  looked  at  each 
other  across  the  bed.  There  was  dead  silence  in  the  house. 
Not  a  mouse  seemed  to  be  stirring;  not  a  board  creaked. 
The  flame  of  the  candle  which  Mr.  Penstephen  had  not  ex- 
tinguished burnt  steadily,  and  seemed  by  its  unwavering 
stillness  to  lay  stress  upon  the  universal  stillness. 

"I  don't  follow  you,"  said  Mr.  Penstephen  at  length. 
"  I  'm  astray  —  or  you  are.  I  have  n't  understood  a  word 
you've  been  saying." 

"I  could  speak  more  plainly,"  said  Betsy. 

"Then  for  Heaven's  sake,  do." 

It  was  all  Betsy  wanted.  She  gathered  herself  up. 

"Very  well,  sir,"  she  said,  "Though  there's  one  thing  I 
suppose  that  I  ought  to  ask,  and  that's  that  you'll  be  so 
good  as  to  remember  that  you  told  me  to."  She  did  not 
pause  for  Mr.  Penstephen's  nod  —  though  he  did  nod  — 
but  proceeded.  "  I  've  seen  this  coming,  sir,  —  seen  it  com- 
ing for  years  if  you  have  n't.  I  've  not  lived  by  the  side  of 
my  lady  here  without  knowing  something  of  her  and  of 
what  she  was  suffering.  This  is  n't  a  shock,  sir,  in  one  sense, 
any  more  than  it 's  a  stroke  —  not  any  one  shock,  sir.  It 's 
a  adding  up  of  blow  upon  blow,  of  shock  upon  shock.  New 
wounds  on  old  wounds;  wounds  on  wounds  that  were  n't 
healed.  Some  people  wouldn't  have  felt  them.  There's 
natures  like  that  —  blunted  or  toughened  or  maybe  not 
sensitive  at  all.  But  hers  is  n't  like  that.  Every  stripe 
told.  Goodness,  when  I  think  of  it!  I've  seen  her  flush  to 
the  roots  or  go  white  —  a  head  turned,  perhaps,  or  a  child 
called  away  from  the  children.  That  'urt  most  —  when  it 
was  the  children;  Master  David  or  Miss  Georgina,  one  or 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  93 

the  other  —  though  most,  I  Ve  sometimes  thought,  when 
it  was  Master  David.  Visiting  it  on  them,  I  suppose  she 
thought,  and  Master  David  nearer  the  time  when  he  would 
understand.  She  never  said  anything.  She  is  n't  one  to 
complain,  is  she?  —  not  Mrs.  Penstephen,  sir.  I've  seen 
her  wince  as  if  she  had  been  struck.  Yes,  though  she  pre- 
tended not  to  see  or  to  hear,  whichever  the  case  was,  or,  if 
that  was  past  doing,  at  least  not  to  mind.  I  've  thought  of 
the  Bible,  sir,  often,  which  you  don't  believe  in  and  which 
she  thinks  she  does  n't,  sir,  —  '  Forgive  them  for  they  know 
not  what  they  do.'  You'll  know,  sir,  what  I  mean  and 
where  the  words  come  from,  although  you  may  n't  hold 
with  them.  I  've  thought  of  those  words,  sir.  She  bears  no 
more  malice  than  He  did." 

Betsy  paused.  Mr.  Penstephen  had  not  moved  —  had 
not  withdrawn  his  eyes  from  hers,  but,  for  the  term  of  the 
last  few  lowered  sentences,  it  was  her  eyelids  they  had 
rested  on,  for  she  herself  was  looking  down  at  her  apron,  a 
bit  of  the  hem  of  which,  as  she  spoke,  she  was  folding  and 
unfolding  with  unconscious  fingers. 

"She's  one  of  the  gentle  ones,"  she  went  on  after  a  mo- 
ment; "but  one  of  the  strong  ones,  too  —  one  of  the  endur- 
ing ones,  that  is,  the  ones  that  bear  things  and  say  nothing 
about  them,  so  that  if  you  did  n't,  perhaps,  know  for  your- 
self what  they  were  suffering,  you  would  n't  for  them. 
They'd  go  on  till  they  dropped,  sir."  Betsy  raised  her 
eyes.  "I'm  making  bold  I  know  —  bolder  than  I  ever 
thought  I  'ad  it  in  me.  You  ought  to  have  seen,  sir.  It's 
been  there  for  you  to  see,  and  in  a  manner  of  speaking 
you've  not  so  much  as  looked.  Times  and  again.  Time 
after  time.    Well  —  my  mistress  has  dropped,  sir." 

There  was  a  long  silence  after  that. 

"You  don't  spare  me,"  said  Mr.  Penstephen  when  at 
length  he  broke  it. 

"I  don't  want  to,  sir.  My  mistress  has  done  that.  It's 
time  that  you  knew  —  time,  if  you  could  n't  know  other- 
wise, that  somebody  told  you." 


94  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Silence  again.  Mr.  Penstephen  came  round  to  her  side  of 
the  bed.  He  seemed  shaken  and  unnerved.  He  pulled  a 
chair  forward  and  sat  down,  and  motioned  to  Betsy  to  sit 
down  too. 

Betsy  would  not,  however. 

"  If  I  ignore  my  station,"  she  said,  "and  take  upon  me  to 
speak  out  to  my  master,  I'd  rather  do  it  standing." 

So  lately  the  other  scene  in  this  room  —  the  curious 
scene  between  mistress  and  maid,  in  which  as  in  this, 
though  differently,  the  barriers  of  caste  had  been  so  arbi- 
trarily set  aside.  The  reflections  of  Mrs.  Penstephen  and 
the  weeping  Katinka  have  hardly  been  wiped  out  before  the 
hanging  looking-glass  is  shewing  this  strange  picture  of 
Mr.  Penstephen  and  Betsy.  .  .  . 

Silence  again.  Mr.  Penstephen  sat  apparently  thinking. 
He  made  no  attempt  to  combat  what  Betsy  had  said.  He 
seemed  to  be  waiting  for  what  she  should  say  further, 
she,  upon  her  part,  in  no  hurry  to  go  on.  She  was  waiting, 
perhaps,  for  what  she  had  said  to  soak  in. 

"  You  said  you  were  n't  alarmed,"  he  reminded  her  when 
he  spoke  next. 

"No  more  am  I,"  said  Betsy;  "but  that 'snot  to  say  that 
I  shan't  be,  sir.  I  've  told  you  that  I  believe  this  will  pass. 
I'm  sure  of  it.  It  will  lift  like  a  fog.  It's  after,  sir.  You 
won't  lose  her  now,  but  if  this  life  goes  on  —  well,  hers 
won't.  You  '11  lose  her  as  sure  as  I  am  taking  upon  me  to 
tell  you  so." 

"What  makes  you  think  — " 

"Think!"  cried  Betsy.  It  was  the  first  time  she  had 
raised  her  voice,  "Think!  I'm  not  thinking,  sir.  I'm 
knowing.  Yes,  and  I  know  more.  I  know  why,"  she  low- 
ered her  voice  again.  "She's  doing  what  can't  be  done. 
That 's  the  shape  of  it.  What  it 's  not  possible  for  man  or 
woman  to  do,  sir." 

Mr.  Penstephen  asked  what  that  was. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  95 

"She  doesn't  know  it,"  said  Betsy.  "She  thinks  she 
thinks  as  you  do,  sir,  —  believes,  if  I  may  put  it  like  this, 
that  she  does  n't  believe.  But  I've  seen!  There  was  the 
children's  prayers,  sir,  which  you  forbade  me  to  teach  them 
—  you  may  remember  about  that.  I  had  taught  them  as 
you  may  recollect.  You  may  have  noticed  that  time;  / 
shan't  forget.  'Suffer  little  children'  .  .  .  she  said.  Could 
there  be  any  'arm  in  that?  But  you  would  n't  have  it,  sir,  — 
would  n't  'ear  of  it.  Very  well.  It  was  to  be  as  you  wished, 
and  it  was;  then  and  afterwards.  But  I  remember  what  I 
remember,  and  it  was  that  day  that,  servant  as  I  am,  I 
held  her  in  my  arms.  I  always  knew  after  that.  In  a  way 
I  had  known  before,  but  it  came  to  me  then  as  certain 
knowledge." 

"Betsy,  you'll  drive  me  mad,"  said  Mr.  Penstephen. 
"Speak  out,  woman.  What  did  you  know?" 

"She's  living  against  her  conscience,"  said  Betsy  at 
once. 

Half-an-hour  later  Mr.  Penstephen  was  still  there.  His 
candle  unheeded  was  burning  itself  low  in  the  socket.  He 
was  sitting  beside  the  bed,  his  arms  stretched  over  it,  and 
his  head  between  them.  Betsy,  her  say  said,  was  sitting 
once  more  in  her  own  chair.  She  was  very  tired  now,  but 
had  no  inclination  to  sleep.  She  looked  over  from  time  to 
time  at  her  master. 

There  were  sounds  now  from  the  street.  The  occasional 
footfall  of  the  labourer  going  to  his  work  was  heard,  and 
the  rumble  of  an  early  cart.  Light  had  shewn  itself  for 
some  time  round  the  edges  of  the  curtained  windows,  and 
where  two  of  the  curtains  did  not  quite  meet.  Birds  were 
singing.  There  was  the  cheep,  cheep,  of  sparrows  sometimes 
from  the  window-sill,  and,  from  somewhere  near-by,  the 
recurring  chorus  of  nestlings  at  the  approach  of  a  parent 
bird  with  food.  Soon  the  town  itself  would  be  waking; 
soon  movements  in  the  house  would  tell  of  the  rising  of  the 


96  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

servants;  soon  Frau  Finkel  herself  would  appear  to  take 
Betsy's  place  by  the  bed. 

Mr.  Penstephen  clasped  his  hands  above  his  head,  but 
did  not  otherwise  move.  To  be  near  the  children's  mother 
seemed  to  ease  him.  He,  no  more  than  Betsy,  was  sleeping 
or  even  sleepy.  After  any  change  of  position  upon  the  part 
of  either  of  the  two  watchers,  stillness  settled  down  upon 
the  room  as  before. 

In  the  stillness  suddenly  a  slight  movement:  the  turning 
of  the  head  upon  the  pillow. 

Betsy,  on  her  feet  in  a  moment,  met  her  mistress's  eyes. 

"Is  that  you,  Betsy?" 

Mr.  Penstephen  started  up. 

"John?" 

He  bent  over  her,  kissing  her,  stroking  her  hand,  mur- 
muring endearments. 

She  looked  then  from  one  to  the  other;  round  the  room 
then,  and  back  to  their  faces. 

"But  ..."  She  was  struggling  to  remember.  "Have 
I  been  here  all  the  time?  Are  you  sure?" 

"Quite  sure,  my  darling." 

She  looked  at  them  doubtingly. 

"  I  've  been  thinking  I  was  in  London.  I  thought  I  had 
bought  David  a  back-gammon  board  in  Regent  Street  for 
his  birthday.  John,  are  you  sure?  Betsy?"  She  searched 
their  faces  again,  "Surely  I  did  buy  it.  It  has  a  marbled- 
paper  back  —  the  usual  sort  of  thing  —  like  book-binding, 
only  I  chose  this  particular  paper.  John,  do  you  mean  that 
I  have  n't  been  away  at  all?  I  thought  I  was  staying 
in  Half  Moon  Street.  I  could  shew  you  the  house.  The 
knocker  on  the  door  was  a  dolphin." 

They  explained  to  her. 

"  I  could  have  told  you  the  dress  I  was  wearing  —  it  was 
my  striped  linsey,  Betsy,  and  what's  more,  I  did  n't  find 
it  warm  enough." 

"The  night  turned  cold  between  three  and  four,  'm.  I 
made  up  the  stove." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  97 

"What  time  is  it  now?" 

Betsy  looked  at  her  watch. 

"But  .  .  ." 

Again  the  long  puzzled  But. 

"  It  was  so  real.  I  remember  my  journey  —  the  crossing. 
It  was  smoother  when  I  came  back  than  when  I  went.  I 
sat  on  deck  coming  back.  I  can  see  the  paddle-boxes  now, 
and  the  smoke  from  the  funnels  —  the  way  it  lay  on  the 
sea.   If  this  was  a  dream  ..." 

"Just  a  dream." 

He  took  both  her  hands  in  his  own,  enveloped  them  with 
his,  uncovered  them  to  look  at  them  and  kiss  them. 

"But  you've  come  back  to  me,"  he  said  huskily.  He 
jerked  his  head  in  the  direction  of  Betsy.  "She,"  he  said, 
"promised  that  you  would." 

Mrs.  Penstephen's  eyes,  quite  clear  now,  but  still  ques- 
tioning, turned  to  Betsy. 

"Dreaming,"  she  said. 

"Yes,  'm.  But  you've  done  with  all  that  now.  Finely 
you  frightened  us,  'm,  but  we  shall  have  you  well  in  no 
time." 

"How  long  have  I  been  ill?" 

"Just  under  twenty-four  hours." 

Even  now  she  seemed  hardly  convinced. 

"The  paddle-wheels  and  the  smoke  on  the  sea  —  like 
smoke  from  an  engine  spreading  itself  on  fields.  The  man 
who  sold  me  the  back-gammon  board  had  spectacles.  I 
should  know  him  again,  I  can  see  him  now.  He  was  rather 
tall  and  stooped  a  little.  I  looked  at  several  boards,  and 
chose  the  one  I  bought  because  it  reminded  me  of  one 
which  belonged  to  my  father." 

"David  shall  have  one  like  it,"  Mr.  Penstephen  said. 
"We'll  choose  one  together  the  first  day  you're  able  to  go 
out." 

"Twenty-four  hours!"  she  said  slowly.  "And  I  thought 
I  had  been  away  a  week." 

She  was  silent  for  a  minute  or  so,  thinking,  taking  her 


98  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

bearings,  sifting  realities  from  imaginings.  The  candle  on 
the  table  spluttered  and  went  out,  and  Betsy,  hastily  put- 
ting the  extinguisher  over  its  smoking  remains,  took  it  out 
into  the  passage. 

"What  I  don't  remember  is  why  I  went,"  her  mistress 
was  saying  when  she  came  back  into  the  room.  "Of  course 
there  was  Katinka  —  I  have  n't  forgotten  that  —  and  all 
that  dreadful  business  — " 

"Don't  try  to  remember  now,  Mary.  Would  you  like 
anything?  Betsy  has  hot  milk  for  you.  Will  you  have  some 
of  that?" 

"If  I  could  have  some  tea  — " 

"Of  course  you  can,  'm.  I  've  the  aetna  here.  I '11  have  a 
cup  ready  for  you  in  less  than  five  minutes." 

"Why,  I  thought  I  went,  I  mean  —  since  I  did  n't  go  at 
all  and  have  just  been  lying  here.  Have  I  had  a  doctor?" 

He  nodded. 

"I  did  n't  know  that.  When?" 

"Yesterday  morning." 

He  did  not  say  that  she  had  had  two,  nor  speak  of  the 
second  visit. 

"No,  I  did  n't  know.  How  funny  David  was  about  the 
paper-knife  —  would  n't  shew  his  throat  if  he  used  it.  Have 
n't  you  been  to  bed  at  all?" 

"Oh,  yes." 

"Betsy?" 

"No,  Betsy  has  n't." 

"Never  you  mind  about  Betsy,  'm.  Betsy's  done  very* 
well-thank-you,  with  armchairs  and  pillows  and  I  don't 
know  what-all.  Rested  in  perfect  luckshry,  Betsy  has.  We 
shall  soon  have  your  tea  ready,  'm.  You  fix  your  mind 
upon  that." 

"What  is  it,  my  darling?" 

She  moved  her  head  helplessly  upon  the  pillow. 

"  I  don't  know,  John.  I  'm  so  tired.  I  think  I  must  have 
been  that  journey,  I'm  so  dreadfully  tired.  Oh,"  she  be- 
gan to  sob  weakly.   "I  don't  want  to  cry.    I  don't  know 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  99 

what's  making  me  or  what's  the  matter  with  me.   Don't 
let  me  cry  or  I  shall  be  ill  again.  Oh,  John.  Oh,  Betsy." 

It  was  Betsy  to  the  rescue  then,  and  Betsy  who  succeeded 
in  calming  her  —  or  perhaps  even  the  tea ! 


CHAPTER  XII 

Far-reaching  the  results  of  Mrs.  Penstephen's  illness  — 
far-reaching,  then,  if  poor  Katinka  was  implicated,  the  re- 
sults of  the  engagement  which  had  been  made  on  the  day 
when  the  blushing  girl  had  presented  herself  at  Frau  Fin- 
kel's,  and  Mrs.  Penstephen  so  apprehensively  had  acted 
against  what  she  thought  of  as  her  better  judgment.  This, 
however,  is  to  look  ahead,  and  the  immediate  results  are 
all  that  yet  concern  us. 

These,  as  Mrs.  Penstephen  regained  her  strength, 
shewed  themselves  in  results  of  their  own. 

Betsy  went  about  singing.  She  was  the  old  Betsy  again 
who  was  never  cross.  She  devised  pleasures  for  the  children : 
little  picnics  mostly  —  their  luncheon  or  their  tea  taken 
with  them  to  the  woods  or  the  fields,  where  flowers  starred 
the  grass,  and  butterflies  looked  so  like  flying  flowers  that 
sometimes  it  seemed  as  if  the  flower  you  were  making  for 
got  up  and  flew  away.  At  these  picnics  she  became  a  sort  of 
Katinka  —  finding  quaker  grasses  for  their  delight,  slender 
nodding  things  the  like  of  which  they  had  never  seen  before : 
or  weaving  the  daisies  which  they  brought  her  —  Georgina's 
one  at  a  time  in  a  little  hot  clutching  hand  —  into  chains 
with  which  she  wreathed  them  and  even  herself.  She  might 
have  been  decking  them  all  to  a  bridal. 

It  would  be  "This  afternoon  if  you're  good  and  when 
I've  seen  to  your  mamma,  we'll  go  for  some  more.  Yes, 
we'll  take  the  setna." 

It  was  the  aetna,  with  Betsy's  basket  and  a  paper  bag  or 
two  to  help,  which  turned  a  walk  into  a  picnic. 

The  rooms  at  Frau  Finkel's  were  full  of  the  flowers  they 
gathered.  They  brought  back  great  bunches  from  all  such 
expeditions,  and  always  one  bunch  composed  entirely  of 
white  ones. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  loi 

"  Does  Mother  like  white  ones  best?  "  David  asked  when 
he  saw  that  the  white  bunch,  which  Betsy  picked  herself, 
was  always  for  his  mother. 

Betsy  smiled. 

"  I  've  a  fancy  that  she  should  have  them,"  she  said. 

Something  was  in  the  air  —  something  that  was  not 
only  the  spring  and  the  imminent  summer.  The  spring  was 
in  tune  with  it,  that  was  all,  so  that  to  Betsy  the  birds 
seemed  to  sing  rather  to  her  singing  —  the  singing  in  her 
heart  —  than  because  it  was  the  season  for  their  song.  The 
very  grasshoppers,  making  their  happy  scratching  noises 
in  the  warm  grass,  rejoiced  with  her  and  for  her. 

"What's  so  nice  about  the  spring  is  that  it  comes  after 
the  long  winter,"  she  said  to  David. 

David  pointed  out  that  the  winter  had  not  been  long. 

"Long  enough,  then,"  said  Betsy;  —  "and  the  stalks, 
talking  of  length,  not  quite  so  short  Miss  Georgina,  dear,  if 
you  want  me  to  thread  them  —  long  enough,  I  should  say,  if, 
thank  God,  not  too  long  for  its  memory  to  be  wiped  out  all 
the  same  now  the  summer 's  before  us."  She  contemplated 
a  grasshopper  which  alighted  on  her  skirt  as  she  spoke. 
"The  'ead  for  all  the  world  like  a  goat's,  and  the  legs  like 
two  pairs  of  step-ladders!  And  to  think  they  can  sing  like 
they  do.  Rubbin'  one  leg  against  the  other,  as  I  think  I  've 
read  somewhere.  Well,  if  any  one  had  ever  told  me  I  could 
feel  friendly  to  a  insect  ...  !" 

Smiles,  singings,  hummings  all  the  day  long.  It  was 
Betsy,  with  hands  full  enough  one  would  have  supposed, 
who  suggested  the  expedition  to  Frankfort  to  see  the  town 
and  the  Zoological  Gardens.  David,  who  was  to  bring  back 
the  recollection  for  all  time  of  some  fearsome  black  swine 
which  the  Zoological  Gardens  held  just  then,  was,  it  was 
plain,  to  be  made  to  feel  that  if  he  had  missed  his  birthday, 
his  birthday  had  been  made  up  to  him  —  in  full  measure, 
too,  pressed  down,  running  over! 

Mrs.  Penstephen,  looking  strangely  like  a  Madonna,  lay 
propped-up  with  pillows  in  her  bed.  She  felt  as  weak  as  if 


102  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

she  had  had  a  long  illness,  but  daily  she  was  gaining  strength. 
Her  books  and  her  work  were  beside  her,  but  she  would 
stop  reading  or  working  to  go  into  long  reveries  from  which 
she  would  emerge  with  starry  eyes.  Hardly  yet  did  she 
seem  quite  back  from  her  dreamings,  when,  as  Betsy  had 
suggested,  her  state,  since  she  had  had  no  sense  of  discom- 
fort in  her  imagined  journey,  or  at  least  had  brought  back 
none  with  her  to  consciousness,  must  truly  have  been  like 
that  of  one  who  groans  under  an  anaesthetic.  No  question 
that  her  present  dreamings  were  not  happy!  Peace  en- 
veloped her  and  shone  in  her  expression.  Her  thoughts 
were  as  the  long  long  thoughts  of  youth,  and  tinged  with 
no  more  than  youth's  happy  melancholy. 

She  spoke  of  Katinka,  sometimes,  with  solicitude  and 
even  affection,  but  of  the  Dreadful  Business  not  at  all. 
Well,  perhaps,  that  David  said  nothing  of  his  glimpse  of 
the  ladies  connected  with  that.  The  peace  a  fragile  thing. 
If  Mr.  Penstephen  caught  sight  of  them  subsequently,  as 
would  seem  probable,  he  did  not  speak  of  them  either. 
They  had  played  their  part,  and  for  the  time  being  were 
done  with.  Betsy  may  have  seen  them — or,  perhaps,  may 
not,  for  the  picnics  took  her  and  her  charges  away  from  the 
beaten  tracks  —  but  she  in  any  case  was  far  too  wise  to 
have  alluded  to  what  would  have  been  disturbing.  She  be- 
lieved, moreover,  that,  their  work  finished,  they  were  in- 
deed thenceforward  negligible.  No  mention  of  them  came 
to  menace  the  tranquillity  of  the  quiet  room,  where  David's 
mother  lay  and  rested  and  dreamed.  .  .  . 

Then,  for  stillness,  suddenly  movement  —  that  for  which 
Betsy  had  been  waiting.  Not  marching  orders,  surely? 
Betsy?  Betsy,  who  had  conceived  the  idea  of  the  piano  for 
an  anchor!  Not  exactly  marching  orders;  something  to  do 
with  marching  orders  for  all  that.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Penstephen 
were  going  away. 

We  see  Betsy,  at  once,  laughing  and  crying,  kissing  the 
children,  kissing  and  kissed  by  her  mistress.  We  see  David's 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  103 

mother  pale,  as  one  who  has  been  ill,  but  with  what  David 
thought  of  afterwards  as  the  Shining  look  in  her  face;  and 
we  see  David's  father  going  about  with  a  light  but  de- 
termined step  and  a  protecting  glance  for  David's  mother. 
Georgina,  if  we  think  of  her  at  all,  we  may  think  of  as  much 
as  usual  —  just  fatly  and  comfortably  complacent.  But 
David,  older,  observant  and  sensitive  to  influences,  we  see 
excited  and  not  a  little  perplexed. 

Years  before  he  was  to  know  —  years  and  years  as  the 
young  count  years !  His  mother  and  father  had  been  away 
before  —  his  father  often.  But  this  going  away  was  some- 
how different.  They  were  n't  going  for  very  long,  Betsy 
said  that;  his  mother  said  it.  Why  was  Betsy  in  such  spirits 
—  yet  somehow  tearful  spirits?  Not  just  ordinary  spirits. 
Why  did  she  look  at  him  in  —  well,  the  way  that  she  did 
look  at  him?  His  mother  looked  at  him  in  something  of  the 
same  way  too.  He  even  found  his  father's  eyes  fixed  con- 
templatively upon  him.  After  such  a  look,  whichsoever  of 
them  it  was  from  whom  it  came,  the  looker  always  smiled. 
Once,  when  it  was  his  mother,  she  turned  away  her  head 
very  quickly,  and  it  was  a  moment  or  two  before  he  saw 
her  face.  But  when  he  did  see  it,  it  was  resolutely  smil- 
ing. 

"Why  are  n't  we  going  too?"  he  asked. 

She  did  not  answer  quite  at  once,  and  when  she  did,  it 
was  not  to  answer  what  he  asked. 

"  Your  father  thinks  that  nothing  but  a  change  will  make 
me  quite  well.   David,  I  think  he's  right." 

"But  could  n't  we  come  with  you?  Could  n't  I?" 

His  mother  shook  her  head. 

He  persisted. 

"  But  could  n't  I?  I  should  n't  have  to  have  Betsy.  She 
could  stop  with  Georgina," 

"No,  David.  But  the  time  will  soon  pass  and  we  shall 
come  back  to  you.  You  '11  be  with  me  really  —  all  the  time, 
every  moment.  And  Georgina  too.   You  're  both  in  my 


I04  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

heart  every  hour  of  the  day.  And  we  shan't  be  far  off  — 
only  Frankfort  where  you  went  the  other  day." 

"We  could  go  over  and  see  you." 

"Perhaps,"  said  his  mother. 

"You  could  come  over  and  see  us." 

"  Perhaps,"  she  said  again;  but  again  she  shook  her  head 
almost  at  once  and  said  No. 

"We  shall  be  back  too  soon  for  visits." 

Yet  every  one  seemed  happy.  David,  excited  by  what 
was  in  the  air  or  perhaps  by  Betsy's  concrete  excitement, 
was  conscious  of  the  joyous  feeling,  even  in  himself,  but 
could  see  no  cause  for  rejoicing. 

The  day  came  for  his  parents  to  go.  That  morning  the 
children's  mother  seemed  hardly  able  to  let  either  of  them 
out  of  her  sight  for  a  moment.  It  did  seem  as  if  there  was 
something  special  in  this  going  away.  It  was  not  David's 
imagination  that  made  all  the  circumstances  that  attended 
it  appear  unusual.  Even  Betsy's  packings  —  and  David 
had  so  often  seen  her  pack !  —  were  not  like  the  usual  pack- 
ings. Not  that  much  luggage  was  to  be  taken.  David's 
father  and  David's  mother,  indeed,  were  taking  as  little  as 
might  be.  Something.  Something  in  the  way  that  Betsy 
laid  out  and  folded  her  mistress's  things  .  .  .  Something  in 
the  way  that  she  laid  them  in  the  trunk  .  .  .  Something  in 
the  directions  that  she  gave  about  one  particular  dress  — 
a  new  one  and,  by  chance  (Providence,  Betsy  said!),  even 
a  grey  one  .  .  . 

"The gloves  you'll  have  to  get,  'm  —  in  Frankfort.  Now, 
you  won't  forget,  'm,  will  you,  and  wear  what  you've  got 
when  there's  not  a  pair  suitable.  White  would  have  done, 
but  you  're  out  of  whites  by  my  stupidity.  A  pearl  grey,  'm, 
remember  —  the  delicate  shade.  Not  too  dark,  'm,  what- 
ever you  do.  I've  put  everything  together  just  as  you'll 
want  it.  Your  shoes  and  your  stockings  and  the  handker- 
chief separate.  One  of  the  lace  ones  that  you've  never 
used." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  105 

"Does  n't  Betsy  spoil  us  all,  David?" 

"You,  'm?  Not  much  fear  of  that.  Beyond  spoiling  you 
are.  The  kind  that  can't  be  spoiled,  'm.  Yes,  Master  David, 
that's  the  kind  that  your  mamma  is." 

David's  mother  laughed. 

"You  hear  that,  children?"  she  said,  catching  Georgina 
up  into  her  arms  —  because  it  was  her  girl-child  that  was  of 
the  size  that  she  could  lift  —  "you  hear  what  this  bad  old 
Betsy  says  —  that  your  mother 's  past  spoiling.  And  I  'm 
not  sure  that  it  is  n't  true.  You  've  all  done  your  best  to 
make  it  true  anyway  —  she  and  both  of  you  and  your 
father,  David.  Your  father.  Oh,  I  wonder  whether  I  'm 
right  to  let  him?'' 

But  Betsy  only  said  something  more  about  the  gloves 
and  went  on  with  her  packing. 

Mr.  Penstephen  was  packing  his  things  in  his  dressing- 
room.  They  could  hear  him  moving  about  —  opening  and 
shutting  drawers.  David,  when  he  looked  in,  emboldened 
by  circumstances,  saw  folded  clothes  on  the  bed  beside  an 
open  portmanteau,  a  pile  of  shirts  upon  a  chair,  and  an 
array  of  boots  and  shoes,  from  which  his  father  seemed  to 
be  choosing  which  he  should  take  with  him. 

"  It 's  the  making  up  your  mind  that  takes  time,  my  boy. 
There's  no  difficulty  when  you  can  put  in  all  you've  got." 

"I  know  all  about  that  sort  of  packing,"  David  said. 
"Everything  that 's  left  over  goes  into  the  hold-all." 

"That's  just  it,"  said  his  father.  "A  man  and  a  woman 
go  forth  with  little  more  than  they  stand  up  in.  As  it  was 
in  the  beginning,  my  son,  before  the  accumulations.  No 
hold-all  this  little  journey," 

David  wandered  round  the  perplexing  room;  examined 
his  father's  razors  and  strop;  his  watch  and  chain  which 
lay  on  the  dressing-table  beside  them ;  his  brushes  (grown- 
up ones  with  ivory  backs  and  no  handles),  his  tortoiseshell 
combs;  the  studs  and  gold  links  and  'solitaires'  and  tie- 
pins  on  the  lacquer  tray  under  the  looking-glass.  Every- 
thing connected  with  his  father  was  wonderful  —  much 


io6  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

more  mysterious,  somehow,  than  the  things  connected  with 
his  mother. 

"Mother's  taking  her  new  dress,"  he  said. 

His  father  smiled. 

"  I  should  take  a  new  suit  myself,  if  I  had  one,"  he  said. 
"Tell  your  mother  that  she'll  have  to  put  up  with  me  in 
old  clothes." 

At  the  door  David  heard  himself  called  back. 

"Tell  her  that  with  my  love,  David." 

And  David,  returning  to  his  mother,  delivered  his  mes- 
sage. Detached  from  its  context  it  required  explanation. 
But  Betsy  saw  it  at  once. 

"He  means  this,  'm,"  she  said  and  touched  the  grey  dress. 

"With  his  love  ..."  said  David's  mother.  "Clothes 
don't  matter,  do  they,  David?" 

But  what  Betsy  said  was  "And  to  think  I  shan't  be 
there  to  dress  you!" 

The  rest  was  hurry  and  bustle.  In  spite  of  oceans  of 
time  the  fly  came  to  the  door  a  little  before  any  one  was 
ready.  There  were  writings  of  labels  with  one  hand,  while 
a  key  on  its  ring  was  shaken  from  a  lock  with  the  other; 
hurried  adjustings  of  straps;  last  looks  round.  The  chil- 
dren and  Betsy  were  to  see  them  off.  At  length  all  were 
bundled  into  the  carriage. 

Frau  Finkel,  with  Gretchen  and  Anna  behind  her,  stood 
on  the  pavement  waving. 

"A  goot  chairney  and  auj  iviedersehen,  and,  if  you  will 
permit,  goot  vishes,  —  de  best  vishes." 

Something  even  here  .  .  . 

The  fly  drove  off. 

"  It's  as  if  we  was  all  going,"  said  Betsy.  But  the  after- 
math of  the  hurrying  was  over  the  drive,  and  "Have  I  got 
the  key  of  my  bonnet-box?"  said  David's  mother. 

Nothing  was  said  in  the  fly.  There  was  talk,  but  it  was 
of  the  trivial  things  of  the  moment ;  things  they  saw  as  they 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  107 

passed.  The  dogs  in  the  little  carts  were  always  an  inex- 
haustible topic,  and  one,  who,  by  his  hanging  tongue, 
seemed  in  need  of  a  drink,  was  pointed  out  and  discussed 
most  of  the  way. 

"Did  you  put  in  my  blue  veil,  Betsy?" 

Betsy  had  done  so.  A  little  more  it  will  be  seen,  than 
just  what  the  man  and  the  woman  stood  up  in. 

Only,  near  the  station:  "If  either  of  them  wasn't  well 
you'd  let  me  know  at  once." 

"Sooner  than  that,  'm.  Make  your  mind  quite  easy." 
■  At  the  station,  while  David's  father  was  getting  the  tick- 
ets and  seeing  to  the  luggage,  his  mother  suddenly  drew 
both  her  children  to  her. 

"Never  love  me  any  less,"  she  said,  "either  of  you. 
Promise  me,  David.   Promise  me,  Georgina." 

That,  with  her  look  as  she  said  it,  was  what  David  was 
always  to  remember  most  vividly  of  the  small  happenings 
of  that  day. 

They  both  promised. 

Then  the  train  came  in  and  David's  father  came  back. 
Leanings  from  the  window;  good-byes;  last  directions. 

"And  if  I  wasn't  forgetting!"  said  Betsy.  "I  thought 
one  of  these  days,  if  you  'd  no  objection,  I  'd  take  them  over 
for  the  afternoon  to  Wiesbaden.  There  might  come  one 
when  we,  who  are  left  behind  so  to  speak,  felt  we  should 
like  a  little  bit  of  an  extra  treat  —  a  sort  of  fete  like,  and 
I  thought  we'd  mark  it  with  a  little  excursion." 

"Yes,  yes,"  cried  the  children. 

Their  parents  had  no  objection. 

"  I  shall  think  of  you  all,  you  may  be  sure,"  said  their 
mother,  "when  that  day  comes." 

The  train  began  to  move.  They  waved  her  out  of  sight. 

On  the  way  home  they  talked  of  the  projected  excursion. 
David  was  for  having  it  at  once  and  proposed  the  next  day. 
But  this,  it  seemed,  was  not  at  all  Betsy's  intention.  It  was 
to  be  kept,  she  said,  for  the  very  last  —  for  something  to 


io8  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

look  forward  to,  all  the  time.  Thus  it  must  be  on  the  day 
before  that  on  which  his  parents  came  back. 

"That 's  the  day  we'll  celebrate,"  she  said.  "That's  the 
day  we  '11  fix  on  to  keep  in  our  minds.  We  '11  have  a  special 
cake  for  tea  and  make  the  day  what  it  will  be  —  a  day  of 
rejoicing." 


CHAPTER  XIII 

There  were  days  which  David  was  always  to  remember. 
The  day  before  his  parents  came  back  was  one  of  these; 
the  day  which  saw  them  come  back  was  another.  The 
time  had  passed  quickly.  The  holiday  spirit  helped,  per- 
haps, for  David's  lessons  had  been  suspended  in  his  parents' 
absence,  and  the  setna  and  the  basket  with  the  paper  bags 
had  been  a  feature  of  almost  every  day's  walk.  Betsy  had 
seemed  determined  to  make  the  period  one  of  special  well- 
being.  So,  to  the  accompaniment  of  blue  skies  and  unfail- 
ing sunshine,  the  days  had  slipped  by  —  to  the  last  but  one 

—  that  set  apart  by  Betsy  for  Wiesbaden  and  what  she 
called  the  Rejoicing. 

"Rejoicing,"  she  said,  "because  your  dear  papa  and 
mamma  come  back  to  us  next  day." 

Betsy  proposed,  however;  the  barometer  disposed.  Nine 
o'clock  saw  the  rain  beginning  to  fall.  Betsy,  who  had 
been  up  at  half-past-six,  when  the  morning  was  almost  too 
beautiful,  saw  with  dismay  the  clouds  begin  to  gather.  She 
hoped  for  rain  at  seven  if  rain  there  must  be.  It  became 
plain  that  there  must  be  rain.  Then  let  there  be  showers. 
Above  all  let  nine  o'clock  pass  drily.  The  clocks  were  strik- 
ing nine  when  the  deluge  began. 

The  odd  thing,  from  David's  point  of  view,  was  that 
Wiesbaden  which,  as  the  morning  went  by,  shewed  itself 
to  be  out  of  the  question,  hardly  seemed  to  be  in  Betsy's 
thoughts  at  all.  She  comforted  the  children  mechanically 

—  even  a  little  impatiently.  David,  smarting  with  disap- 
pointment and  reminded  of  the  day  when  his  mother  had 
been  taken  ill,  burst  out  with  "Well,  you  need  n't  be  cross. 
It's  us  that  ought  to  be  cross  —  Georgina  and  me." 

"I'm  not  cross,  Master  David.  How  you  can  dare  to 
say  such  a  thing!  Me  doing  my  best  all  the  time.   It's 


no  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

provoking  enough  as  it  is  without  being  called  cross,  as  if 
I  could  'elp  the  weather.  And  so  would  anybody  be  cross. 
As  if  it  could  n't  have  rained  any  other  day  from  morning 
till  night  if  it  had  wanted  to.  It's  enough  to  make  a  saint 
cross.  Miss  Georgina,  will  you  stop  licking  the  window 
with  your  tongue  and  clean  pinafore  and  all.  How  many 
times  must  I  tell  you?" 

The  children  wanted  to  go  in  the  rain.  They  were  for  the 
Rejoicing  which  had  been  promised  them  if  they  had  to  re- 
joice wet-foot  or  soaked  to  the  skin.  But  "Wiesbaden!" 
said  Betsy  contemptuously,  and,  having  herself  opened  the 
window  to  look  at  the  sky,  shut  it  with  something  like  a 
bang.  As  if  Wiesbaden  couldn't  wait!  As  if  Wiesbaden 
mattered ! 

"  If  it  don't  stop  by  twelve,"  she  said,  "it  can  go  on  for  a 
week." 

Well,  it  did  n't  stop  by  twelve.  All  day  long  the  rain 
beat  upon  the  windows.  David  watched  the  drops.  Thore 
would  be  an  accumulation  of  them,  and  then,  one  running 
into  another,  there  would  be  a  sudden  slide;  a  rush  down 
the  pane,  leaving  for  a  moment  or  two  a  course  like  the 
course  of  a  river.  Then  the  thing  would  begin  over  again. 
You  might  speculate  on  the  hazards  of  the  rush.  When 
would  it  be?  Now?  or  now?  It  was  always  sudden  when  it 
came  and  lightning-quick.  It  reminded  David  somehow  of 
the  telegraph  wires,  which,  when  the  exact  moment  struck, 
swung  downwards  as  suddenly.  Up,  up,  up,  down;  splash, 
splash,  splash,  collapse,  cascade,  what  you  will!  He  saw 
an  analogy  but  could  not  have  defined  it. 

Tea  brought  a  measure  of  solace.  There  was  honey,  and 
the  cake  which  had  been  promised.  Betsy  had  sent  out  for 
the  cake.  It  was  not,  she  said,  quite  what  she  had  wished 
for,  but  it  had  sugar  on  the  top  of  it,  and  it  was,  as  far  as  it 
could  be,  what  she  called  Special.  She  cheered  up  a  little  at 
tea-time  and  ceased  to  be  what  the  children  meant  by 
'cross.'   She  said,  "We  couldn't  have  got  what  I  really 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  in 

meant,  even  in  England,  because  of  having  to  buy  a  whole 
one.  They're  very  big,  you  know,  with  sugar  ornaments  — 
though  they  do  say  some  of  that's  plaster  of  Paris.  But  we 
could  have  got  a  very  good  substitute  in  any  good  pastry- 
cook's. Well,  we're  lucky  to  have  this  such  a  wet  day,  and 
no  one  to  choose  it  who  knew." 

"Who  knew  what?"  asked  David. 

"Oh,  about  cakes,"  said  Betsy  —  "English  cakes. 
There  's  cakes  and  cakes.  Birthday  cakes  and  Bride's 
cakes  and  Christening  cakes.  What's  fit  for  one  isn't  fit 
for  another.  Birthday  cakes  have  candles,  and  Bride's  cakes 
or  Wedding  cakes  have  almond  under  the  sugar  —  very 
unwholesome,  of  course  —  and  Christening  cakes  .  .  .  well, 
I'm  sure  I  don't  know,  though  of  course  there  is  such  a 
thing.  All  white,  I  expect.  Now,  if  this  had  been  Bride's 
cake,  do  you  know  what  we  should  all  have  had  to  do?" 

Neither  David  nor  munching  Georgina  knew. 

"Why,  each  put  a  little  bit  of  it  under  our  pillows  to 
dream  on." 

"  Dream  on?  "  said  David. 

Betsy  laughed. 

"  It's  supposed  to  make  you,"  she  said. 

David,  who  knew  something  of  the  properties  of  things 
that  were  said  to  disagree  with  you,  thought  perhaps  that 
was  the  almond,  and  Betsy  said  perhaps  so;  but  it  was  de- 
cided that  an  experiment  should  be  made  with  this  cake 
which  had  none.  Three  little  morsels  found  their  way 
under  three  pillows  that  night.  It  is  not  on  record  that  any 
one  dreamt  anything  —  unless  Georgina's  alleged  dream 
that  she  had  eaten  hers  in  the  night  (when  it  had  certainly 
disappeared)  could  be  said  to  count.  A  rite,  however,  in 
connection  with  the  cake  had  been  performed,  and  served 
in  its  turn  to  mark  the  day. 

Something  else  was  to  mark  it.  These  were  the  days 
when  a  telegram  was  an  event,  and  threw  the  recipient  into 
a  condition  of  apprehension  if  not  of  active  alarm.  It  was 
ill  news  to  some  purpose  which  flew  apace  then.   You  kept 


112  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

good  tidings  for  letters  and  only  resorted  to  the  electric 
telegraph  to  tell  of  deaths  or  other  disasters.  Betsy  could 
have  counted  on  her  ten  fingers  the  telegrams  that  had 
come  to  her  employers  in  all  the  years  spent  in  their  service. 
It  was  very  natural,  then,  that  a  telegram  which  arrived 
soon  after  tea,  and,  unlike  a  mere  letter,  was  brought  to 
the  room  by  Frau  Finkel  herself,  should  cause  flutterings. 
Betsy  with  a  startled  face  took  it  from  its  portentous 
bearer.  Her  first  thought  was,  of  course,  that  it  was  from 
Frankfort  to  say  that  something  had  happened  to  her 
master  or  mistress.  To  her  relief,  however,  she  saw  that  it 
was  addressed  to  Mr.  Penstephen.  She  turned  it  over  and 
over  in  her  hands,  examining  it,  and  wondering  then 
whether  or  not  she  ought  to  open  it.  Frau  Finkel  stood 
waiting,  discussing  fors  and  againsts,  but  shewing,  as  Betsy 
saw,  a  decided  bias.  Frau  Finkel  was  for  opening  —  which 
was,  in  the  end,  perhaps,  what  turned  the  scale.  Betsy 
abruptly  put  the  envelope  down  upon  the  table  beside  her 
and  took  up  her  work. 

And  yet  —  Frau  Finkel  urged,  and  paused  significantly. 

Betsy  threaded  her  needle.  The  master  would  be  back 
in  the  morning  —  in  the  afternoon  at  latest.  The  message, 
whatever  it  was,  must  wait. 

"But  if  important,"  said  Frau  Finkel,  "it  should  maybe 
be  telegraphed  on.  Always  am  I  anxious  vid  a  telegram. 
So  urgent  often  — " 

Betsy  shook  her  head. 

"Nothing  could  be  done  at  this  hour.  My  master  and 
mistress  shall  have  their  quiet  evening." 

Frau  Finkel  raised  her  eyebrows  and  her  shoulders. 

"You  know  best,"  she  said,  "but  if  it  was  me  I  should 
be  anxious," 

Which  was  precisely  what  Betsy  was.  She  had  been  re- 
lieved of  her  first  dreadful  fear,  but  she  had  been  startled. 
She  put  the  telegram  against  the  clock  and  went  quietly 
on  with  her  work.  But  from  that  moment,  like  the  ship- 
wrecked saint  and  his  companions,  she  wished  for  the  day. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  113 

So  it  came  that  the  hours  were  marked.  Something,  for 
David,  lay  behind  all  that  happened  or  did  not  happen.  It 
would  be  too  much  to  say  that  apprehension  had  any  part 
in  his  feelings,  but  he  had  seen  the  momentary  apprehen- 
sion of  Betsy,  who  still  looked  at  the  envelope  from  time 
to  time;  and  David,  cheated  again  of  promised  pleasures, 
depressed  by  the  weather,  and  conscious  always  of  the  feel- 
ings of  those  about  him,  was  disturbed.  An  unusual  day, 
somehow,  the  day  before  the  return  of  his  parents. 

They  arrived  in  the  morning.  Betsy  had  not  known  the 
hour  at  which  to  expect  them,  or  she  would  have  taken  the 
children  to  meet  the  train.  A  fly  drew  up  at  Frau  Finkel's 
about  noon  —  just  after  the  three  had  come  in  from  their 
walk.  David  saw  it  from  the  window,  and  was  out  of  the 
room  and  on  the  stairs  before  Betsy  knew  what  had  hap- 
pened. She  followed  with  Georgina. 

"  My  darling  boy,  and  Georgina,  and  Betsy  too,"  David's 
mother,  happy  tears  in  her  eyes,  —  these  the  days  of  tears 
—  clung  to  them  all.  She  released  the  children  to  let  them 
go  to  their  father  and  then  caught  them  to  her  again. 

"And  Betsy  Prig,"  she  said  laughing  and  crying,  "and 
Betsy  Prig." 

It  was  some  moments  before  the  concourse  of  persons 
left  the  passage;  then,  Frau  Finkel,  who  had  run  up  to  re- 
ceive and  welcome  her  patrons,  having  gone  back  to  her 
kitchen  to  expedite  luncheon,  all  mounted  the  stairs,  each 
carrying  something,  and  the  servants  following  with  the 
heavier  luggage.  In  the  sitting-room  the  embracings  were 
gone  through  again.  Betsy  saw  that  her  mistress  looked 
years  younger. 

"And  so  well,  'm  —  quite  different  from  when  you  went 
away,  though  you  were  better  then,  of  course.  Worlds 
better  now,  does  n't  she,  sir?" 

Mr.  Penstephen  nodded  amiably,  and  Mrs.  Penstephen 
said,  "Do  I,  Betsy?" 

Betsy,  gazing  at  her,  gave  a  little  exclamation. 


114  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"There's  something  —  why — "  She  broke  off  and 
looked  again,  "I  declare!  If  you  have  n't  done  your  own 
hair  the  new  way,  'm!  The  way  I  wanted  to  do  it  for  you!" 

Her  mistress  met  her  eyes,  laughing. 

"Successfully?" 

"  If  you  '11  take  your  hat  off,  'm,  I  shall  be  able  to  judge." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  removed  her  hat,  and  Betsy  clasped 
her  hands  in  approval. 

"Not,"  she  said,  "but  what  I  shan't  be  able  to  do  it 
better  for  you  than  that,  'm,  though  wonderfully  and  well, 
considering." 

Mrs.  Penstephen  laughed  again,  happily,  and  turned 
once  more  to  her  children. 

"And  have  you  been  good  both  of  you?  Not  trouble- 
some? And  have  you  missed  your  parents?  Glad  to  have 
your  father  and  mother  back,  David?" 

"There's  a  telegram  for  Father,"  said  David. 

At  once  his  mother's  face  clouded. 

"A  telegram?"  she  said. 

"  If  I  was  n't  forgetting,"  said  Betsy,  and  fled  to  fetch  it. 

A  check  on  the  happiness.  The  strange  property  of  a 
word !  David  was  conscious  of  something.  There  was  some- 
thing even  in  the  way  that  his  father  waited.  .  .  . 

Betsy  came  back  with  the  envelope,  and,  while  her 
master  opened  it,  told  of  her  perplexities.  She  ended  with 
"So  I  did  nothing,  and  hope  I  did  right,  sir." 

There  seemed  to  be  a  long  pause.  Betsy  called  Georgina 
to  her  and  retied  her  sash  which  was  loose.  Mr.  Penstephen 
read  the  message  and  read  it  again.  David,  in  one  of  the 
rather  wriggly  attitudes  of  young  boyhood,  watched  every 
one  —  saw  how  his  mother  searched  his  father's  face,  saw 
that  his  father's  face  told  nothing,  saw  that  Betsy  was 
almost  pretending  to  be  occupied  with  Georgina.  He  was 
too  well-brought-up,  or  too  much  in  awe  of  his  father,  to 
ask  questions,  but  he  hoped  to  know  what  the  telegram 
said. 

"No  bad  news?"  came  at  last  from  his  mother. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  115 

For  a  moment  his  father  did  not  answer.  Then  he  put 
the  paper  into  her  hands,  and  watched  her  absently  as  she 
read  its  message. 

"John,"  she  said  at  length.  "Poor  things!  How  dread- 
ful." 

But  it  was  the  sort  of  'dreadful'  that  you  employed  in 
reference  to  calamities  which  happened  to  other  people. 
Betsy  breathed  again.  Even  David  was  conscious  that 
tension  was  relaxed. 

"Oh,  poor,  poor  things ! "  said  his  mother  again,  and  then 
a  very  curious  look  came  into  her  face.  She  got  up  and 
went  over  to  David's  father,  ignoring  David  who  was  now 
saying,  "What,  Mother?  What,  Mother?" 

"Good  gracious,  John,"  she  said;  "this  will  make — " 

"Yes,"  he  said  shortly. 

Betsy  rose  now  from  her  kneeling  position  beside  Geor- 
gina,  and  called  softly  to  the  children  to  follow  her  from  the 
room.  They  both  demurred,  but  Betsy  was  quietly  insist- 
ing when  Mrs.  Penstephen,  appearing  to  remember,  turned 
to  her,  and  put  the  telegram  into  her  hand,  as,  a  moment  or 
two  before,  Mr.  Penstephen  had  put  it  into  her  own. 

Betsy,  while  David  still  said,  "What,  Mother?"  half 
under  his  breath,  read  it,  looked  at  her  and  read  it  again. 

"Dear,  dear,  'm.  How  dreadful.  The  two  of  them.  How 
terrible."  And  then  her  face  in  turn  underwent  a  change. 
She  looked  from  one  to  the  other  and  flushed  suddenly  to 
the  eyes.  "But  this '11  —  why,  father  and  son —  then  the 
Master's  ..." 

She  broke  oflf  and  used  what  David,  clamouring  now  to 
be  told,  thought  the  most  extraordinary  expression.  For, 
labouring  under  considerable  excitement  and  apostrophis- 
ing his  mother  with  Ohs  of  wonder  and  surprise,  she 
breathed  a  tentative  but  unmistakeable  and  even  jubilant 
M'  lady.  His  mother  hushed  her  down  at  once,  but  it  was 
quite  plain  that  something  significant  had  happened. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

It  was  some  moments  before  David,  strung  up  now  to  a 
pitch  of  excited  expectancy,  which,  in  the  unusualness  of 
all  the  existing  conditions,  found  voice  rather  unrestrain- 
edly, could  get  an  answer  to  his  breathless  questions. 
When  it  came,  it  was,  he  thought,  disappointing.  He  had 
looked  to  share  the  emotions  of  his  elders.  He  only  learned 
that  two  people  were  dead.  To  be  sure,  they  had  died  in 
tragic  circumstances  —  by  misadventure :  the  overturning 
of  a  sailing  boat  somewhere  unnamed  in  the  telegram.  But 
he  knew  neither  of  them.  He  was  not  thrilled.  He  had 
hardly  known  that  his  cousins  Sir  Joseph  Penstephen  and 
his  son  Edward  were  alive  till  he  heard  that  they  were  dead. 
No,  at  first  he  was  not  thrilled.  The  telegram  told  nothing 
but  the  meagre  facts.  "Letter  follows"  was  its  promise, 
but  letter  had  not  followed  yet. 

But  as  he  saw  the  concern  of  his  parents  and  of  Betsy,  — 
the  odd  effect  which  the  news  had  upon  them,  —  his  curi- 
osity was  wakened  afresh.  His  mother  had  grown  very 
grave,  and  his  father  was  absently  looking  out  of  the  win- 
dow. Betsy's  expression  now  was  frankly  triumphant.  Her 
mistress's  'Hush,  Betsy,'  had  not  abashed  her.  His  mind 
jumped  back  to  the  term  she  had  employed. 

Why  had  Betsy  who  (slurring  one  vowel)  always  called 
his  mother,  'm,  called  her  m'  lady  (slurring  another)? 

Questions  thereupon  tripped  themselves  upon  his  tongue. 
They  were  parried  or  unanswered.  The  time,  it  seemed, 
was  not  yet. 

All  the  rest  of  that  day  mystery  was  in  the  air.  As  these 
were  the  days  when  telegrams  were  events,  so  were  they 
days  when  the  young  were  not  lightly  taken  into  the  con- 
fidence of  their  elders.  Betsy,  even,  kept  her  own  counsel, 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  117 

though  she  hinted  at  possible  changes.  She  danced  Geor- 
gina  to  the  ceiHng  —  an  exercise  which,  in  view  of  Geor- 
gina's  size  and  weight,  she  only  performed  when  her  spirits 
were  at  their  highest.  She  overflowed  with  good-humour, 
sang  to  herself,  and  broke  off  in  her  singing  to  say,  "There '11 
be  mourning,  of  course.  I  expect  you  '11  both  have  to  go 
into  black." 

"What  for?" 

"Your  cousins,  of  course,  —  first  once-removed  and  sec- 
ond, I  suppose  they'd  be,  but  near  relations  for  all  that. 
Sir  Joseph  was  your  papa's  first  cousin." 

David  had  lived  too  much  abroad  not  to  know  about 
mourning.  Visions  of  crepe-clad  families  rose  before  him  — 
French  chiefly  —  companies  of  persons  garlanded  with  the 
trappings  of  woe.  A  very  welter  of  crepe! 

"But  we've  never  — "  he  began.  He  had  lost  relations 
before. 

This,  Betsy  said,  was  different. 

It  soon  became  apparent  that  this  was  indeed  different 
—  that  everything  was  different,  and  that  things  were  go- 
ing to  be  even  more  different  still.  His  reluctant  mother, 
it  seemed,  was  really  'my  lady,'  and  his  father  had  amaz- 
ingly become  'Sir  John.'  His  mother  at  length  explained 
to  him. 

Then  came  the  letter.  It  added  little,  materially,  to  the 
information  contained  in  the  telegram.  The  accident  had 
happened  off  the  west  coast  of  Ireland.  The  boat  had  been 
upset  by  a  sudden  squall.  The  bodies  of  Sir  Joseph  Pen- 
stephen,  his  son,  and  a  boatman,  had  been  recovered  the 
next  day.  The  bodies  of  the  first  two  had  been  conveyed 
to  England  and  were  to  be  buried  in  the  family  vault  at 
Ettringham.  David's  father  consulted  time-tables,  but 
found  he  could  not  by  any  means  be  in  time  for  the  funeral ; 
and  here  was  '  differentness '  at  once.  There  had  never  been 
any  talk,  any  remotest  suggestion,  of  his  attending  the 
funeral  of  a  relation  before. 


ii8  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Excitement  now  seized  all  but  one.  It  was  as  if  Betsy's 

excitement  had  infected  the  rest  of  the  household.  Betsy 
had  started  it,  as  David  the  attack  of  measles  which  had 
presently  spread  to  Georgina.  But  measles  had  stopped  at 
Georgina,  and  excitement  ran,  like  a  cold  in  the  head, 
through  the  house,  and  extended  itself  beyond  the  house  to 
the  tradespeople  and  others.  Only  while  every  one  else  was 
excited,  —  even  in  a  contemptuous  sort  of  way,  David's 
father,  —  his  mother  remained  grave.  Almost  one  might 
have  supposed  her  frightened. 

And  in  some  subtle  way  which  David  did  not  under- 
stand, in  his  mother's  graveness  as  in  the  excitement  of  the 
others,  the  recent  absence  of  his  parents  seemed  linked  to 
the  news  which  had  greeted  them  on  their  return.  Betsy's 
excitement,  most  of  all,  seemed  to  be  the  outcome  of  the  one 
in  connection  with  the  other.  David  caught  scraps  of  what 
was  said.  According  to  Betsy  the  order  of  things  had  been 
Providential  —  not  the  actual  order  either,  for  Sir  Joseph 
and  his  son  were  dead  before  .  .  .  (whatever  Betsy  may 
have  meant!),  but  the  seeming  order.  There  would  have 
been  the  delay  if  .  .  .  Besides  which  it  would  have  looked 
so  strange.  Whereas  .  .  .  No,  things  could  n't  have 
worked  out  better.  Providential.  There  was  no  other 
word. 

Questioned  afterwards  by  David  upon  these  unfinished 
and  enigmatic  droppings,  she  said,  "Oh,  well,  it  would  n't 
have  looked  very  seemly  for  your  papa  and  mamma  to  go 
away  after  they  heard  the  sad  news,  would  it?" 

David  conceded  that  it  would  not,  but  he  suspected  a 
parry  in  Betsy's  answer  (the  more  so  that  Betsy  looked  as 
if  she  thought  she  had  got  out  of  something  rather  cleverly), 
and  remained,  as  for  many  years  he  was  to  remain,  mysti- 
fied and  a  little  restive  under  his  mystification.  It  was  as 
if  he  did  not  ask  —  did  not  know  how  to  ask  —  the  right 
sort  of  questions. 

When  his  father  went  to  England,  as  he  did  the  next  day 
after  the  arrival  of  the  letter,  the  feeling  of  excitement  did 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  119 

not  cease.  His  mother  gave  herself  up  to  the  three  in  the 
nursery  —  had  her  meals  with  them,  walked  with  them 
when  they  went  out,  played  with  them,  sang  with  them, 
read  to  them.  But  were  they  refuge  to  her  from  her 
thoughts?  David  was  to  ask  himself  that,  later.  The  grave- 
ness  would  lift  from  her  face  and  she  would  laugh,  as  she 
had  laughed  on  the  day  of  her  return  before  she  had  heard 
of  the  telegram.  But  always  the  grave  look  would  come 
back.  Yet,  in  spite  of  it,  excitement  was  in  the  air  .  .  . 

There  was  open  talk  of  England  now.  No  wonder  there 
was  excitement.  To  David,  as  to  Betsy,  England  stood  for 
the  Promised  Land.  Every  now  and  then  David's  mother 
would  say,  "  I  don't  know  yet  how  it  will  be  " ;  or,  "  If  we  do 
settle  to  go  back."  But,  "Yes,  Yes,  Yes,"  David  would 
protest  at  once,  and,  "Yes,  Yes,  Yes,"  Georgina  would 
echo,  and  the  talk  would  be  allowed  to  play  round  England. 

"  It'll  mean  school  for  you  presently,"  his  mother  would 
remind  him  by  way  of  warning,  if  for  a  moment  she  allowed 
herself  to  be  infected  by  their  spirit.  An  English  school, 
however,  and  David  did  n't  care. 

Letters  began  to  come  from  his  father  —  long  letters, 
bits  of  which  his  mother  read  to  him,  and  other  bits  of 
which  she  read  to  Betsy. 

"It  will  be  England,"  she  said  one  day,  and  called  David 
to  her  and  kissed  him. 

From  that  day  it  seemed  no  time  to  the  day  when,  all 
preparations  having  been  made,  boxes  packed,  bills  paid, 
the  piano  sent  back  to  the  shop,  the  family  gathered  itself 
up  and  said  good-bye  to  Homburg. 

There  were  Auf  wiedersehens  and  shakings  of  hands.  The 
speeding  of  the  children's  parents  so  lately  had  but  fore- 
shadowed this  larger  speeding.  Half  the  street  turned  out 
to  see  them  go,  and  at  the  station  was  Katinka  who  kissed 
and  was  kissed  and  wept. 

"You  come  again,"  Frau  Finkel  had  said,  and  "You 
come  again,"  now  said  Katinka. 


I20  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

She  had  brought  flowers  for  her  mistress,  fruit  for  the 
children,  and  a  handkerchief  for  Betsy. 

"I  shall  never  forget  you,"  David  heard  his  mother  say 
to  her.  "  If  I  ever  do  come  back,  Katinka,  it  will  be  because 
you  have  helped  to  make  me  sorry  to  go.  I  leave  a  friend 
behind  me,  I  know." 

Katinka  could  not  answer.  She  turned  to  Betsy. 

"Sometimes  you  write  to  me,  Fraulein  Betsee." 

"Yes,  indeed  she  will,"  said  David's  mother. 

And  so  the  family  left  Homburg. 

David's  father  was  to  meet  them  at  Dover,  and  there, 
sure  enough,  he  was,  in  unfamiliar  black,  when  the  Calais 
boat  came  alongside.  They  were  going  to  London  where  he 
had  taken  lodgings  for  them. 

He  espied  them  and  waved  to  them  from  the  quay. 

"Fancy,  David,  home!" 

But  the  words  were  spoken  so  low  that  David  hardly 
heard  them.  He  was  wedged  tight  in  a  crowd  of  luggage- 
laden  passengers.  His  mother  was  beside  him  and,  just 
behind  her,  Betsy  with  Georgina  by  the  hand.  People's 
umbrellas  and  sticks  dug  him  in  the  ribs.  The  holland- 
covered  box,  part  of  the  burden  of  one  of  the  sailors,  was 
at  his  elbow.  The  hold-all  and  the  valise,  borne  by  another 
sailor,  were  occasionally  visible  as  the  crowd  moved.  Diffi- 
cult to  attend! 

Presently  they  were  ashore,  and  David  heard  the  word 
again.   His  father  spoke  it  to  his  mother  as  he  greeted  her. 

"Welcome  home,  Mary." 

Betsy  said  it  too,  docking  it  of  a  letter. 

"'Ome  at  last,"  was  what  she  said. 

But  his  mother  looked  stricken. 

Then  the  novelty  of  everything  seized  David's  attention 
and  held  it.  There  were  trains,  there  were  porters,  there 
was  luggage,  but  everything  looked  different  and  no  one 
seemed  to  be  angry.  He  heard  English  on  all  sides  of  him 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  121 

and  his  heart  leapt.  In  a  sort  of  dream  as  it  seemed  to 
David  (and  perhaps  to  his  mother)  they  drew  in  time  to 
London.  In  a  sort  of  dream  they  rattled  to  their  lodgings. 
In  a  sort  of  dream  they  had  their  first  English  meal,  and 
went  to  their  English  beds. 

Long  after  the  children  had  fallen  asleep  their  parents 
sat  talking. 

"You're  not  sorry  about  Ettringham,  Mary?" 

He  was  not  to  have  the  place.  That  went,  for  her  life  at 
least,  to  the  dead  man's  widow. 

As  if  it  were  that ! 

"No,  John.  I'm  glad.  It  would  have  been  an  embarrass- 
ment to  me.  How  should  I  manage  a  large  house?  It  was 
a  relief  to  me  to  know  that  I  should  n't  have  to." 

"We'll  find  a  house."  He  did  so  want  her  to  be  happy. 
"London,  perhaps.  We'll  see  how  we  like  it.  We  shall  be 
considerably  better  off.  There  was  Penstephen  money  that 
Joseph  could  not  leave  away." 

David's  mother,  who  had  flagged  during  the  later  stages 
of  the  journey  and  now  looked  really  ill,  made  an  effort  to 
respond,  and,  trying  to  think  of  something  to  say  which 
should  not  voice  her  deadly  anxiety,  asked  about  Lady 
Penstephen. 

"Susan?  Oh,  she's  well  provided  for." 

"I  didn't  mean  that."  She  roused  herself.  "Was  it 
dreadful?   Is  it  going  to  be?" 

"How,  dreadful?  Oh,  her  attitude.  No,  not  dreadful  at 
all.  She  was  putting  a  great  restraint  upon  herself  I  could 
see,  but  she  was  quite  civil."  He  paused  and  smiled.  "It 
had  been  a  shock  to  her,  all  the  same,  to  hear  we  were 
married.  I  could  see  that,  too.  She  looked  forward,  I  think, 
to  not  being  able  to  receive  you." 

"She  can  still  refuse,  John." 

"No,  Mary.  She  is  going  to  receive  you.  She  thinks  it 
her  duty,  I  believe." 

Mary  Penstephen  fell  into  reverie. 


122  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Was  anything  changed?  —  actually?  Lady  Penstephen, 
who  could  n't  have  received  her  before,  could  receive  her 
now.  She  would  be  pointed  at  still,  of  course,  pointed  out, 
talked  about,  but  she  was  no  longer  outside  the  law  and 
could  be  met  on  sufferance.  How  strange  it  all  was.  David's 
father  proceeded. 

"We're  to  stay  there,  presently,"  he  said.  "If  you  will 
—  if,  that  is,  I  can  prevail  upon  you  to  come.  Susan  is  to 
be  seen  receiving  you.  The  world  is  to  know  that  she  does 
receive  you.  The  odd  thing  is  that  the  ridiculous  woman 
means  well." 

"Is  she  ridiculous?" 

"I  think  so.  But  I  think  you'll  have  to  go,  Mary.  She 
does  so  genuinely  believe  that  she  will  be  doing  the  right 
thing.  She  will  be  too.  That's  what  makes  ii  ridicu- 
lous." 

But  he  wished  her  to  go. 

"Oh,  I'll  go,  John." 

As  if  she  would  not  do  anything  to  please  him.  He  had 
done  so  wonderful  a  thing  for  her  —  if,  in  view  of  an  awful 
possibility,  so  disastrous.  Was  not  his  act  a  negation  of  his 
whole  life?  Yet  he  had  not  hesitated.  She  would  do  any- 
thing—  even  try  to  be  happy.  He  still  did  not  ask  her 
what  ailed  her,  for  he  knew,  or  thought  he  knew.  Was  there 
not  that  which  neither  of  them  had  said,  though  each  knew 
that  the  other  must  have  thought  of  it?  Impossible  that 
the  unspoken  thing  should  have  escaped  either  of  them. 
Even  Betsy,  determined  as  she  was  to  see  nothing  but  good 
in  the  family's  changed  fortunes,  must  have  come  face  to 
face  with  it  in  the  first  five  minutes  of  her  excitement. 

He  tried  to  distract  her  thoughts  with  talk  of  the  future. 
Years,  after  all,  were  long.  He  himself  comparatively 
young.  He  went  back  to  the  question  of  the  house.  The 
first  thing  to  do,  or  one  of  the  first  things,  was  to  settle 
where  they  wished  to  live.  There  was  all  England  to  choose 
from  —  all  the  world  for  that  matter  —  but  actually  all 
England. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  123 

"For  we've  finished  with  the  Continent,"  he  said,  hop- 
ing to  please  her. 

But  it  seemed  to  her,  looking  back  across  the  present 
dread  anxieties,  that  the  years  of  the  wandering  had  been 
not  unhappy  years. 

"There  are  places  I  shall  want  to  see  again,"  she  said, 
partly  to  gain  time.  "Oh,  a  great  many.  I  shall  certainly 
want  to  go  back  some  day  to  Homburg." 

Yes,  Homburg  had  treated  her  well.  Homburg  had  made 
her  happy,  if  it  had  also  dealt  her  its  blow  and  made  her 
very  unhappy. 

"We'll  go  back  some  day  to  Homburg." 

It  was  no  use.  The  talk  languished.  There  was  a  long 
pause. 

"John,  I'm  so  frightened,"  she  said  at  last. 

He  took  her  hand  in  his.  The  thing  had  to  be  spoken, 
then?  Better,  perhaps,  that  it  should  be. 

"Yes,"  he  said.   "David.   I  know." 

But  he  did  not  know,  and  the  knowledge  that  he  did  not 
and  that  she  had  to  tell  him,  froze  what  she  had  been  about 
to  say  on  her  lips.  He  was  silent  for  a  moment  or  two, 
gently  pressing  the  hand  he  held.  There  was  so  little  that 
he  could  say  that  would  avail  anything. 

"Mary,  we  could  not  have  foreseen."  He  had  to  take 
refuge  in  that.  These  wretched  little  dignities  that  had  so 
complicated  things !  What  could  have  been  unlikelier  than 
that  he  should  ever  succeed?  "We  just  did  not  know.  We 
have  to  remember  that  we  could  n't  have  known.  Noth- 
ing 's  changed  really,  though  everything  seems  to  be." 

He  looked  at  her,  questioning  her  with  his  eyes,  but  she 
did  not  speak. 

"I  don't  withdraw  from  anything  that  I  have  held,"  he 
said  then.  That  was  a  challenge. 

But  still  she  did  not  speak.  She  could  not  or  would  not 
tell  him  whether  or  not  she  withdrew. 

"Our  children,"  he  heard  himself  saying,  "were  bom 


124  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

outside  no  laws  except  the  arbitrary  laws  of  men's  making. 
They  were  born  in  wedlock,  Mary,  whatever  men  may  say, 
or  may  say  that  wedlock  means.  You  've  only  to  look  at 
them  to  know  that  —  love-children  in  the  truest  sense  of  an 
ill-used  word  —  love-children,  as  all  children  should  be. 
Isn't  it  so,  Mary?" 

She  nodded  to  that. 

"Oh,  in  that  sense,  yes." 

But  she  gave  him  no  help.  She  hardly  knew,  herself,  what 
she  thought.  All  that  she  knew  was  that  if  she  had  had  her 
life  over  again,  nothing  —  no  love,  no  passion,  no  faith 
even  —  would  have  induced  her  to  do  what  she  had  done. 

"What  then,  Mary?" 

She  wanted  her  hands  to  put  over  her  eyes,  but  he  held 
one  of  them  and  she  would  not  draw  it  away.  She  bent 
her  head  over  the  hand  that  was  free  and  buried  her  face  in 
the  hollow  of  her  wrist. 

"Our  marriage,"  she  said  at  last. 

He  thought  he  had  not  heard  her  aright. 

"  It's  as  if  by  protecting  ourselves  we  had  pushed  David 
further  outside  the  law  than  he  was  before.  Oh,  he  is  out- 
side it,  John,  whatever  we  tell  ourselves.  You  and  I  know, 
perhaps,  but  who  else?  And  I  've  defeated  my  own  purpose. 
It  was  n't  all  for  my  own  peace  of  mind.  I  'd  been  wretched, 
I  know,  but  it  was  n't  only  for  myself.  It  was  because  they 
were  outside.  I  thought  that  people  would  forget  in  time. 
I  thought  that  when  it  couldn't  be  said  any  longer  that  we 
were  defying  opinion — "  She  broke  off.  He  pressed  the 
hand  he  held  more  tightly.  "And  they  would  have  for- 
gotten. In  time  the  four  of  us  would  have  been  taken  for 
granted.  But  now  it  will  always  be  remembered  against 
David  that  he  can't  succeed  you.  And,  oh,  John,  it  may  be 
worse  than  that  —  much,  much  worse."  She  raised  her 
head  and  met  his  eyes  in  a  long  look.  "  I  've  been  afraid  for 
some  days,"  she  said.  "I'd  been  ill  —  I  might  have  been 
mistaken.  But  now  I  'm  almost  sure." 
•^  There  was  a  longer  pause  than  before.    The  breath 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  125 

seemed  to  go  out  of  her  body,  and  it  was  in  a  voice  that 
was  scarcely  audible  that  she  spoke  next. 

"If  it's  a  boy,  John,  I  hope  I  shall  die." 

So  David's  mother  in  the  wretched  night  that  should 
have  been  so  happy. 

But  David  slept  dreamlessly,  to  wake  in  the  morning  to 
new  and  wonderful  adventure  —  the  adventure  of  unex- 
plored England. 


CHAPTER  XV 

These,  then,  were  the  circumstances  in  which  the  strangely 
placed  family  landed  on  the  shores  of  England.  Small 
wonder  if  the  heart  of  one  of  them  was  heavy  with  dread. 

It  was  now,  however,  that  the  influence  of  David  made 
itself  felt.  For  to  him  the  adventure  of  England  was  stu- 
pendous —  the  adventure  of  London  —  and,  infecting  his 
mother  with  his  young  excitement  at  a  time  when  every 
influence  mattered,  he  may  be  said  perhaps  to  have  saved 
her.  Impossible,  though  skies  were  to  fall  to-morrow,  to  be 
with  David  in  London  to-day  and  give  way  to  despondency. 
She  suffered  herself  to  fall  under  the  spell  of  his  rapture. 
England.  London.  His  wildest  dream.  He  had  fervour 
enough  for  them  both. 

Yes,  for  David  at  least  the  adventure  was  immeasurable. 
It  began  with  what  he  thought  of  as  the  dififerentness  — 
difference  a  word  that  would  not  in  the  least  have  expressed 
what  he  meant!  —  quite  different  bread;  quite  different 
rooms  and  furniture;  quite  different  windows;  quite  differ- 
ent sights  to  be  seen  through  them :  carriages,  carts,  people. 
It  went  on  to  the  shops,  taking  everything  else  on  its  way. 
There  was  a  grocer's,  for  instance,  where  it  chanced  that 
his  mother  bought  tea  the  day  after  the  arrival.  No  buy- 
ing of  tea  had  been  quite  like  this.  First  two  separate 
papers,  an  inner  and  an  outer,  were  spread  upon  the 
counter.  Then  a  canister  from  a  row  of  canisters  was 
lightly  swung  down  and  held  beneath  the  salesman's  right 
arm,  while  with  his  left  hand  he  twisted  off  the  most  beau- 
tifully fitting  lid.  Then  scales  which  hung  on  a  little  pulley 
overhead  were  drawn  downwards,  the  weighing  rapidly 
but  very  accurately  accomplished  —  a  little  more,  a  little 
less,  still  a  little  less  —  the  tea  poured  from  the  scales  on 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  127 

to  the  papers  waiting  to  receive  it,  the  scales,  one  inside  the 
other  now,  sent  flying  back  to  mid  air  where  they  swung 
themselves  to  gradual  repose,  the  Hd  clapped  on  to  the  can- 
ister, the  canister  hoisted  ever  so  lightly  back  to  its  place 
in  the  row  of  canisters ;  and  the  process  of  the  wrapping  up 
began.  Fascinating,  absorbing,  the  process  of  the  wrapping 
up  —  from  the  preliminary  indentation  made  with  the 
finger  in  the  exact  middle  of  the  pyramid,  to  the  moment 
when,  the  rituals  of  the  folding,  the  propping  on  one  end, 
the  smoothing,  the  turning  over,  the  refolding,  having  all 
been  gone  through  in  undeviating  order  —  David  was  wit- 
ness to  the  processes  on  numberless  occasions  —  the  sales- 
man, who  from  being  just  the  'man  at  the  tea  counter' 
became  in  course  of  time  Mr.  King  and  was  waited  for  if 
he  was  serving  other  customers,  snapped  the  string  with  a 
sudden  jerk,  put  the  parcel  down  beside  others,  and,  lean- 
ing deferentially  forward,  waited  the  name  and  the  nature 
of  what  was  then  always  called  the  Next  Article. 

And  all  this  against  an  engaging  background  of  neat 
purple  rectangular  parcels  containing  white  sugar,  and  neat 
blue  triangular  ones  containing  brown! 

Or  the  day's  shoppings  would  take  these  great  adven- 
turers to  a  draper's,  and  David  would  see  such  common- 
place things  as  buttons  become  wonderful  because  they 
were  sewn  on  to  enchanting  sheets  of  gold  or  of  silver;  to 
remind  him  of  the  golds  and  the  silvers  of  Grimm.  Or  he 
would  see  ribands  that  were  rolled  on  large  reels  or  even 
cardboard  wheels,  from  which,  the  'matching'  being  ef- 
fected, they  would  be  rapidly  pulled  in  lengths  till  enough 
lay  upon  the  counter  to  allow  of  the  measuring.  One,  two, 
three  —  three  and  a  half  yards:  snip!  then,  wind,  wind, 
wind,  from  thumb  to  little  finger,  the  hand  moving  like  a 
shuttle,  and  it  is  time  in  turn  for  the  draper's  And  the  Next 
Article!  (A  confusion  of  ideas  at  this  period  left  David, 
hearing  of  many  things  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  with  a 
vague  impression  that,  of  conceivable  or  at  any  rate  likely 
articles,  there  were  exactly  thirty-nine !) 


128  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Or  he  would  see  the  coloured  borders,  not  meant  to  be 
used,  which  finished-off  the  blackest  of  black  silks;  or  the 
brilliant  arabesques  that  ornamented  a  mere  label.  Noth- 
ing was  too  trivial  to  be  interesting.  There  were  sights, 
there  were  sounds,  there  were  rituals.  There  was  some- 
thing to  be  got,  if  you  were  receptive,  from  the  mere  way 
in  which  the  flat  rolls  of  silk  or  calico  or  flannel,  or  what 
was  comprehensively  known  as  Material,  were  flopped 
down  on  to  the  counter,  and  flopped  over  and  over  in  the 
unrolling ;  from  (again)  the  measuring  —  so  many  rapid 
loopings  from  end  to  end  of  the  marked  yard  at  the  back  of 
the  counter;  from  the  ultimate  exquisite  horror  of  the  tear- 
ing. Yes,  even  the  draper's  shop  yielded  its  secrets  (which 
were  its  mysteries)  to  the  enthralled  little  boy. 

And  there  were  secrets  which  were  mysteries  waiting  for 
him  everywhere  —  in  the  streets,  in  the  parks,  in  the  grey 
river.  .  .  . 

Thus,  you  see,  and  thus,  so  that,  through  David,  de- 
vouring London  with  wide  eyes,  his  mother  was  induced 
or  even  obliged  to  keep  hold  on  life  at  a  time  when  her 
grasp  was  like  to  have  been  relaxed.  No  uncertainty  pres- 
ently. The  thing  was  decreed;  and  David,  supporting  her, 
strengthening  her,  contributed,  as  she  in  darker  moments, 
we  may  be  sure,  did  not  fail  to  perceive,  to  the  well-being 
of  that  potential  life  which  some  day  might  shadow  his 
own.  .  .  . 

But  it  would  not  shadow  his  own.  The  worst  was  to  be 
spared  her.  She  was  sure  of  it.  As  she  became  accustomed 
to  the  idea  of  what  had  filled  her  with  such  dismay,  so  did 
the  conviction  grow  with  her  that,  in  this  at  least,  the  fates 
would  prove  compassionate.  Her  spirits  recovered  them- 
selves. She  sang  "  II  segretto  per  esser  felice"  to  the  yellow- 
keyed  piano  in  the  drawing-room.  Her  child  —  oh,  this 
would  be  granted  to  her  if  nothing  else  in  all  her  life !  — 
would  be  a  girl. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  129 

Meanwhile,  with  the  shoppings  and  sight-seelngs,  were 
house-huntings;  a  visit  to  the  Depository  in  Baker  Street, 
where,  all  these  years,  the  furniture  with  which  they  had 
started  what  she  always  thought  of  as  their  married  life, 
had  been  stored ;  visits  to  dealers ;  a  sale  or  two  —  a  very 
busy  husband.  Then  a  house  having  been  found  (in  Cheyne 
Walk)  and  given  over  to  plumbers,  painters,  and  paper 
hangers,  and  August  by  this  being  half  through,  a  sojourn 
of  some  weeks  at  the  seaside.  In  October  came  the  move  in, 
and  after  that  a  month  or  so  of  the  process  known  as  set- 
tling down.  Their  Christmas  dinner  —  they  had  always 
bowed  so  far  to  convention  as  to  have  one  —  was  eaten,  in 
no  picnic  fashion,  amongst  their  own  household  gods,  each 
now  in  its  place. 

Peace  again;  the  fear  strangely  lulled;  Mary,  perhaps, 
in  the  dream  which  was  David's.  Peace,  anyway;  a  home 
for  her  children;  passive  days  of  waiting.  Afterwards  she 
looked  back  on  these  days  with  wonder.  The  house  oc- 
cupied her.  That  she  should  have  one  —  and  in  England ! 
Perhaps  she  might  always  have  had  one?  Perhaps  Betsy 
had  been  right  about  London,  where  you  did  not  indeed 
know  so  much  as  the  names  of  your  neighbours.  No, 
marriage  had  made  a  difference  —  or  was  it  only  that  she 
no  longer  looked  for  the  averted  eye  or  the  more  deadly 
stare?  If  so  the  change  was  in  herself.  But  though  she 
knew  presently  that  the  change  was  indeed  partly  in  her- 
self, she  saw  very  plainly  that  marriage  had  made  a  very 
considerable  difference.  The  leper  cleansed,  no  longer  the 
heralding  cry,  but  no  longer,  also,  the  anticipative  parting 
of  the  crowd.  What  taint  remained  was  retrospective.  .  .  . 

There  were  clear  shining  frosty  days  that  winter.  You 
came  in  from  your  walk  to  cheerful  firelit  rooms.  There 
was  often  rime  on  the  trees.  There  came  a  very  cold  spell, 
and  blocks  of  ice  floated  down  the  river.  The  windows  were 
for  the  river;  the  river  and  its  craft  for  the  windows.  David 


I30  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

never  tired  of  watching  the  barges.  And  after  the  cold 
spell,  a  warm.  The  ice  disappeared,  and  the  gulls,  which 
came  inland  for  shelter,  went  back  to  the  sea;  but  there 
were  always  the  boats  and  the  barges;  always  the  long 
windows  through  which  to  see  them.  Except  when  the  fogs 
came,  and  the  fogs  came  too;  and  David  liked  even  the  fogs. 

Here  Betsy  applauded  him.  She  was  proud  of  them. 
"Something  they  can't  do,"  she  said,  "  in  your  Frances  and 
Italics.  Just  nasty  wet  mists  when  they  try.  These  are 
fogs.  There's  fogs  here  that  you  would  n't  believe  not  if  I 
was  to  tell  you.   I'm  London  born  and  I  know." 

The  fogs  with  the  rest.  And  all  the  time  things  going 
on  out  of  sight  —  in  the  womb  of  time,  in  the  womb  of  the 
sleeping  earth.  The  first  snowdrops  presently,  for  outward 
and  visible  sign;  the  first  crocus. 

David's  father  came  and  went.  The  servants  said,  Yes, 
Sir  John,  and  No,  Sir  John,  and  hurried  to  do  his  bidding. 
David's  mother,  smiling  a  little  to  herself,  believed  in  her 
heart  of  hearts  that  he  liked  it.  She  could  smile  over  this 
little  weakness  as  yet.  He  had  spoken  of  his  tuppenny 
'handle'  —  the  tuppenny  honours  which  his  cousins'  death 
had  conferred  upon  him  —  but  she  could  see  that  he  found 
such  honours  easy.  She  was  well  content,  and  saw  him  go 
backwards  and  forwards,  as  we  say,  between  Cheyne  Walk 
and  Ettringham  without  misgiving.  Her  own  visit  had  not 
been  paid  yet  —  at  first  because  house-hunting  and  settling 
in  had  made  it  difficult  to  arrange,  and  then  for  other 
reasons.  It  would  be  best  now  to  wait  till  after  —  well, 
till  she  should  be  quite  strong  again.  Meanwhile  Susan, 
whom  she  could  never  think  of  otherwise  than  as  Lady  Pen- 
stephen  —  the  real  Lady  Penstephen  —  had  written  and 
had  written  kindly. 

So  time  went  on.  She  was  well;  she  was  ailing;  she  was 
well.  On  the  whole  she  was  well.  It  was  when  she  was  not 
well  that  the  dark  moments  came  in  which  the  fixed  idea 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  131 

which  was  sustaining  her  seemed  not  fixed  at  all.  At  such 
moments  if  her  eyes  fell  on  David  they  would  be  full  of  a 
very  frenzy  of  remorse.  Years  afterwards  David  recalling 
such  a  look  comprehended  it. 

A  dame-school  now  for  David,  who  forthwith  grew  and 
expanded,  adding  new  words  to  his  vocabulary.  His  mo- 
ther, in  view  of  his  history  and  his  somewhat  unusual  bring- 
ing-up,  had  some  qualms  as  to  what  might  lie  in  store  for 
him,  but  he  fitted  quite  comfortably  into  his  niche,  and 
nothing  of  any  importance  happened  to  make  his  tenure 
of  it  insecure  or  to  make  her  uncomfortable.  Some  trifling 
difificulties  arose  in  connection  with  his  religious  teaching, 
but  a  few  concessions  on  both  sides,  his  parents'  and  that 
of  the  lady  who  kept  the  school  (and  who  Sir  Johned  Da- 
vid's father,  and  Lady  Penstephened  his  mother,  almost  as 
much  as  the  obsequious  servants)  brought  matters  to  an 
amicable  agreement.  David  might  'learn'  what  was  called 
Divinity,  but  must  have  no  dogmatic  instruction.  His 
music  lesson  —  Miss  Doubleday  with  the  pink  fingers  — 
was  made  to  clash  conveniently  with  the  inconvenient  half 
hour.   Such  things  could  generally  be  arranged. 

But  every  time  John  came  back  from  Ettringham,  Mary 
was  conscious  of  some  little  modification  of  his  attitude 
toward  the  world  he  had  professed  to  despise.  He  no  longer 
spoke  of  Susan  as  ridiculous.  She  upon  her  part  seemed  to 
have  reconsidered  him.  Circumstances  in  connection  with 
the  settlement  of  the  estate  had  at  first  necessitated  his 
presence  two  or  three  times  at  Ettringham,  and  she  had  got 
into  the  way  of  relying  upon  his  advice.  Insensibly  he 
slipped  into  the  position  which,  in  less  unusual  conditions, 
would  naturally  have  been  his,  as  her  nearest  male  con- 
nection. He  had  hated  his  own  family  and  had  lumped  her 
in  with  it.  He  was  inclined,  perhaps,  to  believe  that  he  had 
done  her  an  injustice!  Mary  saw  the  change  come  gradu- 
ally, and  still  saw  nothing  in  it  to  alarm  her. 


132  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Her  dream  held  her.  The  time  was  getting  near  now.  A 
girl  child.  Another  Georgina.  What  stores  of  love  she  had 
waiting  for  her  —  love  that  would  be  the  greater  in  that  it 
could  never  rival  the  love  which  she  had  for  David  her 
first-born.  Her  heart  was  large  enough  for  the  precious 
three  that  had  made  up  her  world  hitherto.  It  would  be 
large  enough  for  this  fourth. 

"Betsy,  she'll  have  my  David's  eyes,  and  she'll  be  round 
and  soft  and  firm  too,  like  my  little  Georgina." 

" If  she's  like  her  mother  she'll  have  all  the  eyes  and  all 
the  figure  she  need  have.  And  she  will  be." 

"No,  she'll  have  her  father's  figure.  She'll  be  tall  later 
—  soft  and  round  at  first.  Sometimes  I  see  her  quite 
clearly.   I  can't  tell  you  whether  she's  dark  or  fair." 

"  I  should  like  her  to  be  very  fair,  m'  lady.  And  yet  again 
I  don't  know.  Neither  one  nor  the  other,  'm,  perhaps.  She  '11 
be  a  beauty  whichever  it  is.   Not  a  doubt  about  that." 

This  sort  of  talk;  not  a  word  of  a  man  child.  Nor  was 
it  foolishness  on  the  part  of  David's  mother.  It  was  a 
species  of  faith  —  a  blind  belief  that,  in  this  supreme  in- 
stance, the  powers  that  be  would  not  fail  her.  It  was  as  if 
she  had  been  promised  a  daughter,  as  the  Mary  of  Maries 
had  been  promised  a  Son.  And  so  to  within  a  day  or  two 
of  the  child's  birth.  Then  at  the  last,  at  the  eleventh  hour, 
her  heart  failed  her.  No  one  knew  or  could  know  —  she 
as  little  as  the  least  concerned.  In  vain  that  Betsy  kept 
her  bolstering  attitude.  In  vain  that  she  pleaded  the  long 
months  of  unshaken  —  scarcely  shaken  —  conviction.  In- 
comprehensible now  the  feeling  of  security  which  had  sus- 
tained her.  She  had  cried  peace  to  herself  when  there  had 
been  no  peace.  What  had  she  to  go  upon?  Nothing.  True 
she  had  believed  that  the  being  who  came  to  be  David 
would  be  a  boy.  And  Georgina  —  she  had  hoped  for  a  girl 
when  Georgina  was  born.  But  what  were  these  but  idle 
guessings?  You  must  be  right  or  wrong.  She  had  chanced 
to  be  right.  No,  the  hazards  were  appalling.  She  felt  as  if 
she  had  been  trapped  or  betrayed  or  overtaken.  And  while 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  133 

she  had  slumbered  time  had  gone  steadily  on.  There  was 
nothing  that  she  could  have  done,  yet  she  felt  as  if  every 
moment  she  had  spent  calmly  had  been  a  moment  lost. 

"What  am  I  to  do,  Betsy?  What  am  I  to  do?" 

"Don't  excite  yourself,  m'lady.  Oh,  it'll  be  all  right. 
You'll  see." 

"Ah,  you  mean  whatever  happens,"  said  her  mistress. 
"And  it  can't  be  — don't  you  see,  either  of  you?  You, 
Betsy,  or  Sir  John?  If  it's  a  boy  there's  David  ...  It 
must  be  a  girl,  and  it  won't  be.  Oh,  I  know  that  now,  and 
I've  deceived  myself  all  these  months." 

The  doctor  was  warned  that  night  and  the  nurse  was  in- 
stalled before  the  morning.  Anxiety  then,  a  hushed  house, 
a  room  to  be  passed  on  tiptoe.  Straw  presently  in  the  road 
outside  —  most  surprising  straw  which  Georgina  at  least 
would  have  liked  to  play  in. 

Horrible  anxiety,  mysteries;  terrors.  Then  an  announce- 
ment more  surprising  to  the  children  than  even  the  straw. 
They  —  and  somehow  particularly  David  (as  it  seemed  to 
David)  —  had  a  little  brother. 

Was  that,  David  asked,  why  his  mother  had  been  ill? 

Yes,  that,  it  seemed,  after  the  briefest  pause  on  the  part 
of  Betsy,  was  why  his  mother  had  been  ill.  But  she  was 
better,  and,  please  God,  was  very  soon  going  to  be  well. 
Later  in  the  day  David  was  allowed  to  peep  at  her  and  at 
his  baby  brother.  His  mother  whispered  something  to  him, 
but  so  low  that  he  did  not  hear  it. 


THE  SECOND  BOOK  OF 
DAVID 


BOOK  THE  SECOND 

CHAPTER  I 

Changes  after  that.  You  could  n't  quite  say  what  they 
were  —  just  changes.  It  was  from  then  that  David,  as  it 
seemed  to  him  later,  began  his  growing  up.  Looking  back 
he  would  have  said  off-hand  that  there  had  been  little  in- 
terval before  he  was  at  school  in  earnest,  but,  as  he  did  not 
leave  his  dame-school  till  he  was  eleven,  nearly  three  years 
must  have  passed  before  this  change  came  for  him. 
Changes  for  all  that  —  odd  little  indefinable  things.  Betsy 
becomes  dim  at  this  point.  There  was  always  something 
in  her  arms.  Betsy's  arms  were  not  less  open  to  David  or 
Georgina,  but  Johnny  was  there  you  see  already.  Also 
David  himself  had  less  need  of  them.  Georgina,  encased 
in  comfortable  fat  and  now  boldly  growing,  had  always 
been  self-sufficing.  David's  father  was  certainly  changing. 
That  had  something  to  do  with  Johnny,  who  had  the  same 
importance  in  his  eyes  as  in  the  eyes  of  the  impressed  and 
impassioned  Betsy.  The  person  who  was  not  changed  was 
David's  mother.  She  loved  Johnny,  but  he  did  not  fill  her 
arms  somehow  as  he  filled  Betsy's.  David,  quite  unaware 
that  he  needed  solace  of  any  sort  soever,  found  and  provided 
solace  there. 

Then  a  notable  sign  of  change  —  for  David's  mother. 
David,  even  if  he  had  known  of  it,  would  not  have  grasped 
its  significance.  It  was  after  one  of  the  visits  to  Ettringham 
that  David's  father  spoke,  out  of  a  fidgety  silence.  Silences 
were  not  usually  fidgety  with  David's  father.  He  had 
something  to  say  and  presently  said  so. 

"Yes,  John." 

He  was  intent  upon  the  newspaper  which  he  was  folding 
and  unfolding,  or  he  would  have  seen  that  she  looked  at 
him  curiously. 


138  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"It's  about  Baby." 

"Yes,  dear." 

He  did  not  speak  for  a  moment  or  two,  and  then  Mary 
spoke  for  him. 

"You  want  to  have  him  baptised." 

"Mary!"  he  said;  and  then,  as  she  looked  at  him,  "How 
did  you  know?" 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said.   "I  just  did  know." 

There  was  silence  again  after  that  —  a  silence  no  longer 
fidgety  (he  had  put  down  the  paper),  yet  not  quite  tranquil. 

"Susan  was  talking  to  me.  You  know  how  she  would 
regard  this  —  " 

' '  Yes.  How  every  one  would  regard  it.  Not  only  Susan." 

"She  more  than  most  people.  Yes,  she  more  than  most. 
It's  bred  in  the  bone  with  her  —  part  of  her.  It's  such  a 
little  thing." 

"Is  it,  John?" 

"Well,  to  us.  To  her  it's  a  very  big  thing.  Do  you 
think  we  might  please  her?" 

"There  are  godparents,"  Mary  said.  "What  about  god- 
parents?" 

"We  discussed  that.  She  offered  to  stand  godmother 
herself." 

"And  the  godfathers?  A  boy  has  two." 

"Well,  that  was  a  difficulty.  I  told  her  I  would  n't  ask 
any  of  my  relations.  She  said  she  would  undertake  to  find 
me  godfathers." 

"One  might  like  to  know  something  of  one's  child's 
godparents." 

"Oh,  she  had  General  Burke  in  her  mind,  I  fancy,  from 
what  she  said.  He's  known  me  all  my  life.  He's  a  neigh- 
bour. And  she  spoke  of  Archdeacon  Eversley  who  is  a  very 
old  friend  of  the  family." 

Archdeacons ;  old  friends ;  the  return  to  the  fold  was  un- 
compromising. 

"It's  just  Baby?" 

"How  do  you  mean?" 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  139 

"She  did  n't  speak  of  David  and  Georgina?" 

"Their  names  did  n't  come  up." 

"Their  souls  should  be  as  precious,  John,  from  her  point 
of  view,  if  .  .  ." 

She  did  not  finish. 

"She  was  talking  of  Baby." 

"It's  different  too,  isn't  it?"  There  was  the  first  note 
of  bitterness  in  her  voice  that  he  had  perhaps  ever  heard 
there  —  if,  indeed,  he  heard  it  now. 

"You  see  it's  the  usual  thing.  She  asked  me  when  it 
was  to  be?  She  took  it  for  granted,  you  see.  It  was  when 
I  hesitated — " 

"You  did  hesitate." 

"I  was  taken  a  little  unawares." 

Mary  finished  the  work  she  had  in  hand  —  she  was 
darning  a  hole  in  one  of  David's  stockings  —  and  put  it 
away. 

"Yes,  John,"  she  said.  "I  don't  know  that  I  have  any 
objection." 

"Thank  you,  Mary." 

She  saw  that  he  thanked  her  for  raising  no  difficulty  in 
pleasing  Susan. 

"John,"  she  said,  more  in  her  own  voice,  "what  about 
David  and  Georgina  —  ?" 

He  had  been  about  to  go  out  of  the  room  —  perhaps  with 
the  intention  of  writing  to  Susan  at  once.  He  paused  at  the 
door. 

"If  Baby,"  she  said,  "why  not  they?" 

There  was  no  reason  except  —  yes,  there  was  a  reason. 
Baby  would  be  christened  in  the  usual  course.  Baby  was 
so  many  weeks  old.  But  David  and  Georgina.  Now  and 
here?  Would  it  not  be  raking  up  the  whole  thing  over 
again?  There  were  the  servants.  There  was  any  one  at  all 
who  might  see  or  might  hear. 

Mary  said  no  more. 

David's  father  wrote  to  Susan  that  night.  The  answer 
to  his  letter  came  to  Mary. 


I40  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Might  not,  Lady  Penstephen  wrote,  the  christening  take 
place  at  Ettringham,  and  would  not  Mary  pay  her  the  long- 
deferred  visit  now?  Would  not  Mary  and  John  give  her 
this  pleasure?  Mary,  from  her  place  behind  the  tea-urn, 
handed  him  the  letter  in  silence. 

"Will  you,  Mary?" 

"Yes,  John,  of  course." 

"  She  speaks  of  next  week.   Can  you  be  ready  by  then?" 

"  I  can  be  ready  at  once." 

"Then  write  and  say  Monday.  It  will  please  her  that 
we  should  choose  the  earliest  day.  We'll  go  from  Monday 
to  Thursday.  That  will  leave  us  Friday  and  Saturday  if 
we  want  to  stay  on.  Betsy  can  be  ready,  I  suppose?" 

"Betsy  will  be  ready.  She'll  be  as  pleased  as  you  are, 
John." 

He  laughed  a  little. 

"Yes.  I  don't  deny  that  I'm  pleased.  If  my  little  son 
is  to  be  christened"  (he  avoided  the  other  word,  the  word 
Mary  had  used),  "  I  should  like  it  to  be  there.  There  have 
been  Penstephens  at  Ettringham  for  a  good  many  years. 
That  goes  for  something,  does  n't  it,  even  in  these  days. 
And,"  he  added,  "  I  greatly  want  Susan  to  know  you." 

Betsy  was  sent  for. 

She  was  as  excited  as  her  mistress  had  expected. 

"You'll  let  me  come  with  you  to  choose  the  christening 
robe,  won't  you  'm  —  won't  you,  m'lady?  It  did  really 
want  but  this,  did  n't  it?  And  he'll  be  as  good  as  gold. 
You  '11  see.  Yes,  my  precious,  you  're  going  to  Ettringham. 
There's  for  you!" 

There  was  no  difficulty  about  David  and  Georgina. 
Betsy  had  a  most  efficient  helper  now  in  one  called  Ellen. 
She,  with  Matilda  the  good-natured  and  competent  house- 
maid, would  look  after  them  and  make  them  quite  happy 
in  her  superior's  absence.  Their  mother  had  no  misgivings 
on  their  account.  Yet  it  was  with  a  heart  that  was  not 
wholly  unsore  that  she  set  out  for  the  home  of  their  father's 
fathers. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  141 

Ettringham,  as  the  home  of  the  Penstephens,  should,  by 
the  rule  of  the  Tre-,  Pol-,  and  Pen-,  have  been  in  Cornwall. 
It  was,  however,  in  the  Midlands  whither  a  branch  of  the 
Cornish  family  had  migrated  in  the  early  part  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  The  oldest  portions  of  the  house 
were  Tudor;  to  the  newest  Early  Victoria  had  contributed. 

Externally  the  result  might  be  a  little  perplexing.  In- 
ternally the  house  was  very  gracious,  had  a  pleasant  at- 
mosphere, and,  thanks,  rather  to  Victoria  than  to  James 
or  Anne  or  even  the  Georges,  was  solidly  comfortable. 
There  was  a  small  park  round  it ;  or,  more  accurately  speak- 
ing there  was  park-land,  for  what  should  have  been  park 
was  divided  up  into  fields  which  the  late  master,  who  did 
a  little  farming  on  his  own  account,  had  used  for  pasture. 
This,  with  some  farms  and  the  gardens  in  which  Lady  Pen- 
stephen  took  her  pride,  comprised  the  estate. 

For  Mary,  Ettringham  began  at  the  station  where  she  and 
John  with  Betsy  and  the  sleeping  child  were  met,  and  where 
something  in  the  look  of  the  waiting  carriage,  the  sleek 
horses,  the  imposing  Penstephen  liveries,  made  a  curious 
impression  upon  her. 

Just  what  this  impression  was  she  could  not  have  said. 
The  things  themselves  seemed  to  stand  for  solidity,  the 
established  order.  The  very  footman,  touching  his  hat  and 
carrying  her  dressing  bag,  was,  in  his  long  coat  with  the 
silver  buttons,  less  a  servant  than  a  symbol  of  dignified 
service,  and  not  of  dignified  service  only,  but,  by  implica- 
tion, of  the  dignity  of  that  which  was  served.  A  propos  the 
thought  came  to  her  cruelly  that  in  her  own  case  (and  more 
unhappily  the  case  of  her  children)  the  symbol  would  have 
had  to  be  a  commissionnaire  I  She  shook  the  thought  from 
her. 

The  footman  was  putting  the  dressing-case  into  the 
carriage  beside  Betsy. 

"The  luggage  will  follow  in  the  cart,  my  lady.  Yes,  Sir 
John,  her  ladyship  is  very  well  thank  you.  No,  Sir  John, 
her  ladyship  is  alone,  except  of  course  for  Miss  Ingoldby." 


142  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

The  carriage  —  a  landau  —  was  very  comfortable.  The 
drive  was  through  a  flat  but  very  pleasing  country,  well- 
wooded  and  well-farmed.  David's  father  talked,  pointing 
out  this  and  that,  and  Mary,  a  little  nervous  now,  answered 
intermittently.  But  she  was  seeing;  beginning,  she  thought, 
even  to  understand. 

"We  shall  pass  the  village  of  Ettringham  in  a  minute. 
There  's  the  church  through  the  trees  —  a  Norman  tower. 
I  don't  Icnow  whether  the  ceremony  will  be  there  or  in  the 
house." 

"Baby's  equal  to  anything,"  said  Betsy  complacently. 
"If  it  was  immersion  even,  he  would  n't  mind." 

"Oh,  the  sprinkling  of  a  few  drops  of  water,"  said 
David's  father.  "What  is  it?" 

"No,  sir,"  nodded  Betsy. 

"Here  is  the  lodge.  But  we're  not  there  yet.  Look, 
Mary.  Is  n't  it  a  pretty  house?  There  used  to  be  the 
sternest  old  woman  in  it  when  I  used  to  stay  here  as  a  boy. 
She  frightened  me  every  time  she  opened  the  gates.  Good- 
ness, the  austerity  of  those  days!   Goodness!   Goodness!" 

A  buxom  young  woman  opened  the  gates  now.  She  curt- 
seyed cheerfully. 

"I'm  glad  you  should  see  these  rhododendrons  in  flower," 
said  David's  father.  "I  always  remember  what  they  look 
like.  There's  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  them.  There  were  rhodo- 
dendrons at  Cheddington  too"  (the  home  of  the  Calvinist 
uncle  where  his  own  repressed  boyhood  had  passed)  —  "I 
used  to  wonder  they  were  allowed  there  .  .  ."  He  broke  off. 

Mary  shuddered  —  remembering  many  things. 

"It  must  have  been  dreadful!"  she  said. 

"Beauty  wasn't  thought  right,  at  Cheddington.  Here 
it  was  a  little  difl'erent  —  though  not  so  very.  Beauty  then 
was  n't  thought  quite  right  anywhere  in  what  were  called 
religious  circles.  Ettringham  was  austere  enough  in  my 
uncle's  time  —  though  at  Cheddington  I  don't  think  even 
he  was  thought  to  be  quite  sound.  You  could  n't  quench 
the  spirit  of  Ettringham,  that  was  all.  Cheddington,  except 


DAVID   PENSTEPHEN  143 

for  the  rhododendrons,  had  no  spirit  —  no  beauty  anyway 
—  to  quench.  You'll  see  the  house  in  a  moment.  It's  an 
odd  jumble  but  there's  something  about  it  ...  " 

There  was.   Mary's  heart  warmed  to  it  when  she  saw. 

The  baby  was  awake  now.  His  father  leaned  towards  him. 

"Lift  him  up,  Betsy.  I  want  him  to  see.  I  want  my  son 
to  see  Ettringham." 

Betsy  complied  proudly.  It  was  only  a  way  of  speaking, 
of  course,  for  Johnny  took  notice  as  yet  of  nothing  at 
wider  range  than  arm's  length.  With  exhortations  and 
encouragement  she  was  duly  shewn,  then,  what  he  did  not 
see. 

David's  mother  sat  back  in  the  shadow. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  carriage  had  drawn  up  at  the 
door.  Its  approach  had  been  heard,  and  a  butler  and 
another  footman  were  already  on  the  steps. 

Lady  Penstephen  rose  from  a  low  chair  as  they  were  an- 
nounced. Of  the  two  Lady  Penstephens  it  was  she  who 
appeared  the  more  nervous,  though,  even  as  Mary  observed 
this,  she  saw  that  the  frail  little  woman  in  the  widow's 
cap  could,  none  the  less,  be  formidable.  She  seemed  un- 
certain whether  to  kiss  her  or  not,  and  when  she  decided 
to  do  so  Mary  had  drawn  back  a  little,  so  that  there  was 
the  slightest  pause  before  her  greeting  was  complete.  She 
turned  to  John  as  to  some  one  with  whom  she  was  at  ease, 
and  then  back  to  Mary,  asking  her  about  her  journey,  but 
somehow  giving  the  impression  that  she  was  still  address- 
ing John. 

"You'd  like  some  tea  now,  and  then  to  be  shewn  to  your 
rooms.  You  will  find  my  arrangements  comfortable,  I 
hope.  The  room  I  have  made  the  nursery  is  quite  near 
yours  —  just  across  the  passage.  You  know  the  rooms, 
John.  Yours  and  Mary's  is  the  one  you  have  always  had. 
There's  a  sitting-room  off  it  on  one  side,  you  may  remem- 
ber, where  you  '11  like  perhaps  to  write  your  letters,  and  the 


144  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

dressing-room 's  the  other.  Your  son  bore  the  journey  well? 
That's  right!  I'll  come  up  and  see  him  when  you've  had 
some  tea.  Now,  let  me  give  you  some  tea  —  Oh,  I  'm  just 
waiting  for  the  tea-pot,  I  see.  If  you  kindly  ring  that  bell, 
John.   Ah,  here  it  is." 

No,  on  second  thoughts  Mary  did  not  think  she  was 
nervous.  She  remembered  a  phrase  or  two  of  John's  after 
his  first  visit.  "She  was  putting  a  great  restraint  upon  her- 
self I  could  see  that  ..."  "She  had  been  a  little  dis- 
appointed, I  think,  to  hear  we  were  married  .  .  ."  "She had 
looked  forward,  I  think,  to  not  being  able  to  receive  you  .  .  ," 

The  tea,  which  Mary  welcomed  for  its  own  sake,  eased 
the  situation  a  little.  John  was  talking  now.  Mary,  drink- 
ing her  tea  and  answering  her  hostess's  enquiries,  became 
conscious,  though  the  stiffness  was  there,  that  kindliness 
underlay  it. 

"I  thought  we  would  be  alone  for  this  evening.  To- 
morrow one  or  two  people  are  coming  to  dinner  —  just 
quietly  —  General  Burke,  whom  you  '11  like  to  talk  to,  as 
he's  to  be  one  of  the  godfathers,  and  my  dear  old  Arch- 
deacon Eversley.  When  you  come  to  me  next  I  shall  hope 
to  give  some  dinner-parties  for  you.  I  think  I  told  you, 
John,  I  should  have  wished  it  even  now  if  there  had  been 
time,  for  I  would  n't  have  allowed  the  consideration  of  my 
mourning,  which  would  be  a  selfish  one  in  this  case,  to  in- 
terfere with  what  should  be  done  in  your  honour.  However, 
as  I  say,  there  has  n't  been  time,  and  I  promise  myself  this 
pleasure  for  your  next  visit." 

Mary,  who  knew  how  carefully  the  guests  would  have 
had  to  be  chosen  and  how  discreetly  approached,  thought 
she  was  glad  to  be  spared  the  dinner-parties.  She  accepted 
at  once,  however,  the  kindness  of  the  intention.  She  could 
see  this  stiff,  odd,  little  woman  taking  infinite  trouble.  She 
murmured  her  thanks  rather  than  spoke  them  and  was 
grateful  to  John  who  answered  for  her. 

"It's  very  good  of  you,  Susan.  It  would  have  been  out 
of  the  question  now.   But  later,  later." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  145 

"It  will  be  better  later,"  said  Lady  Penstephen. 
A  door  opened  just  then  at  the  further  end  of  the  room 
and  another  lady  entered.  This  was  Miss  Ingoldby,  who 
had  been  governess  to  Lady  Penstephen's  dead  son  when 
he  had  been  a  small  boy,  and  who  had  lived  on  at  Ettring- 
ham  since,  as  his  mother's  companion.  She  was  a  dumpy, 
round-about,  good-tempered  person  in  spectacles  and  a 
garden  hat,  and,  the  spectacles  and  the  garden  hat  some- 
how helping,  she  relieved  the  tension  at  once.  She  was  pre- 
sented to  Mary  and  shook  hands  with  John. 
"I  long,"  she  said,  "to  see  Baby." 

Presently  a  move  was  made.  Lady  Penstephen  — 
Susan  —  led  the  way.  She  was  a  little  lame  and  walked 
slowly.  She  was  probably  not  much  more  than  fifty  but 
looked,  as  was  indeed  almost  the  custom  then  with  middle- 
aged  people,  some  ten  or  even  fifteen  years  older  than 
her  age.  Her  voluminous  crepe  skirts  swept  the  polished 
floors. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said,  "whether  you're  fond  of 
pictures.  Some  of  these  portraits  are  supposed  to  be  good." 
She  paused  before  a  picture  as  she  spoke. 
"Since  I  've  known  John  here  I  've  thought  this  very  like 
him.  It's  an  Edward  Penstephen  —  his,  let  me  see,  his 
great-great-grandfather  —  yes,  his  grandfather's  grand- 
father, that  would  be  it.  I  get  mixed  among  the  greats. 
Do  you  see  what  I  mean?  —  in  the  eyes,  I  think,  and  per- 
haps the  mouth.  If  you  stand  here  —  no,  a  little  more  to 
the  left.  The  light's  bad.  Draw  that  curtain  a  little.  That 's 
better.   Now  stand  beside  it,  John." 

Yes,  Mary  saw.  But  her  eyes  had  fallen  on  something 
else.  Yes,  she  quite  saw,  she  said.  The  mouth  particularly. 
But  that  one? 

"Oh,  that?"  said  Lady  Penstephen  without  interest. 
"That's  another  Edward  Penstephen." 

They  proceeded.  In  the  room  which  had  been  tem- 
porarily made  into  a  nursery  they  found  Betsy  and  the 
baby,  surrounded  by  a  little  group  of  women  servants  who 


146  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

had  gathered  to  do  homage.  This  group  vanished  as  if  by 
magic  as  the  other  appeared, 

Betsy  rose  and  made  obeisance. 

"Now,"  said  Lady  Penstephen,  "let  us  have  a  look  at 
him." 

Betsy's  face  was  one  huge  beam. 

Lady  Penstephen  looked  long.  She  touched  the  round 
cheeks  then  and  the  little  pink  hands.  The  little  pink 
fingers  closed  round  one  of  hers.  At  that  point  she  turned 
away. 

"He  does  us  all  credit,"  she  said  to  Mary. 

Miss  Ingoldby  said  more,  yet  less  somehow  than  she. 

John  was  delighted. 

"Couldn't  be  better,"  he  said  when  they  were  alone. 
"She  likes  you,  too,  Mary,  I  can  see  that.  She  accepts  us 
both.  After  all,  one  has  to  remember  that  from  their  point 
of  view  there  was  something  to  swallow." 

"Yes,"  Mary  said,  "there  was  indeed  something  to 
swallow." 

"Well,  it's  swallowed,"  said  John. 

Mary  was  n't  so  sure.  She  was  still  feeling  a  little  sore. 
It  hurt  her  somehow  to  see  John  himself  so  well  satisfied. 
Betsy's  satisfaction  she  could  understand  —  though  even 
Betsy's  .  .  .  no,  not  even  Betsy's  satisfaction  was  entirely 
comprehensible. 

"Oh,  David,"  she  said  to  herself,  "oh,  David,  and  oh, 
my  little  Georgina." 

It  was  as  if  they  belonged  to  the  years  of  the  wandering, 
and  the  years  of  the  wandering  were  to  be  wiped  out  —  as 
if  that,  the  wiping  out,  was  to  be  the  sign  and  the  earnest 
of  her  rehabilitation.  What  had  come  to  John  that  he 
should  suffer  it  to  be  so?  There  was,  one  at  least  must 
think,  no  need  for  this  rehabilitation  if  what  they  had  done 
had  been  right.  And  if  what  they  had  done  had  been  wrong 
all  along,  then  —  but  even  she,  accustomed  to  sorrows, 
could  not  face  the  sorrow  that  lay  there. 

And  then  she  saw  that  she  was  not  putting  the  case  quite 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  147 

fairly.  Had  she  not  admitted,  a  moment  before,  that  from 
Susan's  point  of  view  —  the  accepted  point  of  view  — 
there  was  much  to  get  over?  The  thing  was  self-evident, 
and  why  had  she  come  at  all  if  she  was  not  going  to  be 
reasonable?  Why  had  it  hurt  her  that  her  baby,  whom  she 
so  tenderly  loved,  should  be  shewn  Ettringham,  and  be 
shewn  in  turn  to  Ettringham?  Why  should  Lady  Pen- 
stephen's  approval,  wound  her  too? 

"Betsy." 

"Yes,  'm." 

Betsy  could  never  quite  get  out  of  the  old  ways. 

"May  I  have  him  now?" 

"While  I  unpack,  m'lady.  I  was  going  to  lay  him  in  the 
cradle.  Have  you  seen  it, 'm?  Look.  Cupids,  don't  they  call 
them,  holding  a  great  shell.  They  say  it  has  held  a  French 
king.  Well,  Baby 's  worthy  of  it,  that 's  all  I  've  got  to  say." 

"Give  him  to  me,"  said  his  mother. 


CHAPTER   II 

"It  is  curious,"  said  John  as  they  went  down  to  dinner, 
"that  you  should  have  noticed  that  picture."  They  were 
passing  it  then,  —  the  httle  portrait  which  Mary  had  re- 
marked while  Lady  Penstephen  was  pointing  out  the  big 
one. 

There  was  nothing  particular  about  it  except  that  it  bore 
a  likeness  to  David  —  or  rather  that  David  bore  a  likeness 
to  it. 

"  It  would  have  been  more  curious  if  I  had  n't.  You  had 
seen  it  too!  Why  did  n't  Lady  Penstephen — "  She  broke 
off.   "Had  you  spoken  of  it?" 

"Yes.   It  struck  me  greatly." 

Then  she  had  not  been  mistaken.  Lady  Penstephen  had 
not  responded. 

"What's  the  matter,  Mar>'?" 

"Nothing,"  she  said.   "Nothing.  What  should  be?" 

"I  thought  you— " 

He  did  not  say  what  he  had  thought,  not  quite  knowing 
perhaps,  but  he  looked  at  her  a  little  anxiously. 

"Oh,  no,"  she  said. 

A  door  opened  in  the  corridor  at  hand  and  Miss  In- 
gold  by  appeared.  The  three  went  down  together.  Mary 
admired  the  hall  —  darkish  now  in  the  light  of  its  oil 
lamps. 

"Yes,  it's  a  dear  house,"  said  Miss  Ingoldby.  "You'll 
like  it  more  when  you  see  it  in  full  daylight.  It's  been  ex- 
traordinarily pulled  about  —  you'll  see  what  I  mean  when 
Lady  Penstephen  takes  you  over  it.  It  has  been  altered, 
and  added  to,  and  pulled  down,  and  rebuilt,  and  restored, 
and  goodness  knows  what  else,  and  yet  it  is  harmonious." 

Lady  Penstephen  was  down  before  them.  She  put  a 
marker  into  her  book  as  they  came  in,  and  took  off  her 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  149 

spectacles.  These  she  slipped  into  a  case  which  hung  at 
her  side.  Mary  came  to  know  the  peculiar  look-down 
which  accompanied  this  action. 

"  I  hope  your  rooms  are  comfortable  and  that  your  nurse 
has  all  that  she  wants.  She  seems  a  nice  woman." 

"Betsy?  I  don't  know  what  we  should  do  without  her. 
Yes,  everything  she  could  possibly  want,  thank  you." 

Lady  Penstephen  turned  to  John. 

"The  Archdeacon  told  me  he  had  heard  from  you,"  she 
said.   "You  wrote  to  General  Burke  too?" 

"Yes,  at  once.  It's  really  very  good  of  him.  Very  good 
of  them  both." 

"Your  little  son  is  to  be  congratulated  on  his  godfathers. 
Two  good  men,"  she  said  to  Mary. 

Mary  at  that  moment  could  not  speak.  It  was  John  who 
said,  "On  his  godparents.  I  count  him  luckiest  of  all  in  his 
godmother." 

"Oh,  me,"  said  Lady  Penstephen.  "Ah,  well.  He  must 
make  the  best  of  me." 

Dinner  was  announced  now  and  the  party  proceeded  to 
the  dining-room. 

"To-morrow,"  Lady  Penstephen  said  to  John,  "you  will 
take  the  end  of  the  table.  To-night  I  want  you  beside  me. 
One  on  each  side  of  me."  She  motioned  Mary  to  her  right. 
"That's  it." 

Mary  had  been  hungry.  Her  late  tea  had  not  taken  the 
edge  off  her  modest  appetite.  But  now  she  was  not  hungry. 
Lady  Penstephen  sat  on  a  raised  chair  and  carved.  "Let 
me  give  you  a  little  more,"  was  a  recurring  phrase  at  dinner 
in  those  days. 

"Not  any  more,  thank  you,"  was  Mary's  answer  each 
time  that  it  was  addressed  to  her. 

"After  your  journey,"  Lady  Penstephen  remonstrated 
with  her  once. 

But  Mary  protested  that  she  was  doing  very  w^ell.  She 
was  glad  when  the  time  came  for  dessert.  You  could  eat 
fruit  when  you  were  Inclined  for  nothing  else. 


I50  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

She  helped  herself  to  some  grapes.  The  bloom  on  them 
was  beautiful. 

The  Ettringham  vines  were  famous,  John  told  her, 

"Ah,  they're  not  what  they  used  to  be,"  Lady  Pen- 
stephen  said.  "Since  Evans  died  none  of  them  seem  to  have 
borne  so  well.  He  had  been  head  gardener  here  for  twenty- 
five  years.  The  younger  men  are  n't  what  their  elders  were. 
If  I  did  n't  look  after  the  gardens  myself,  they  would  n't 
be  what  they  are,  and  that  is  n't  saying  very  much.  How- 
ever, such  as  they  are  I  look  forward  to  shewing  them  to 
you  to-morrow,  Mary.   You  care  for  flowers?" 

Mary  cared  for  flowers. 

"I  forget  whether  you  have  any  garden  yourself.  As  I 
remember  Chelsea  —  but  years  ago  that  is  —  many  of  the 
houses  had  gardens." 

The  house  in  Cheyne  Walk  had  a  garden.  There  was  a 
pear-tree  in  it  and  one  of  London's  rare  mulberry-trees. 

"A  mulberry-tree,"  said  Miss  Ingoldby.  "Come,  that 
sounds  like  a  real  garden." 

"It's  a  real  mulberry  tree,"  said  Mary,  smiling,  "It 
even  bears  fruit.  The  fruit  they  tell  us  —  we  have  n't  seen 
it  yet  ourselves  —  does  n't  ripen  very  well  —  but  there 
it  is." 

"I  never  hear  of  a  mulberry-tree  without  thinking  of 
silkworms,"  said  Lady  Penstephen.  "We  had  silkworms 
as  children  and  a  neighbour  of  ours  in  Hampshire  had  a 
mulberry-tree.  We  used  to  go  to  him  for  the  leaves.  We 
called  it  borrowing  them,  I  remember,  or  rather  our  nurse 
did,  for  she  was  our  spokeswoman.  'The  young  ladies 
were  wondering  if  you  would  be  so  kind  as  to  lend  them 
some  —  or  some  more  (it  was  always  some  more)  —  mul- 
berry leaves  for  the  silkworms.'" 

"David  keeps  silkworms,"  said  David's  mother,  and 
then  was  angry  with  herself,  for,  of  her  pride,  she  had  made 
up  her  mind  not  to  mention  him  till  her  hostess  should  have 
spoken  of  him.  A  pause  followed  the  remark,  and,  when 
conversation  was  renewed,  it  had  gone  back  to  the  subject 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  151 

of  gardens  and  gardeners,  upon  both  of  which  Lady  Pen- 
stephen  had  much  to  say.  The  servants  put  the  decanters 
on  the  table  and  withdrew. 

Mary's  heart  was  aching  now.  It  was  some  moments  be- 
fore she  could  recover  control  of  herself.  No  one  saw  — 
not  Lady  Penstephen,  it  is  probable;  certainly  not  Miss 
Ingoldby  who  was  peeling  a  pear;  not  even  David's  father. 
Outwardly  she  was  calm;  inwardly  her  very  soul  was  in 
arms  for  her  first-born.  For  a  few  moments,  under  the 
black  moire  and  the  aquamarines  on  their  velvet  bands, 
her  bosom  heaved  with  the  stress  of  the  storm  that  shook 
her.  John  seemed  in  league  with  the  forces  which  dis- 
turbed her.  When  he  spoke  of  his  son  he  meant,  not  David, 
but  the  baby  that  lay  sleeping  upstairs  in  Betsy's  arms 
or  in  the  royal  cradle.  Did  n't  he  see  —  even  he?  Did  they 
want  her  to  lose  her  love  for  her  latest-born?  Did  they 
want  the  love  which  she  bore  him  to  turn  to  bitterness? 

Susan  caught  her  eye. 

"If  you  won't  have  any  more  fruit?  Nor  you.  Miss  In- 
goldby? No?  Shall  we  go,  then?  John,  we  leave  you  to 
your  wine." 

John  opened  the  door  and  they  all  swept  out,  their 
dresses  rustling. 

Yet  the  kindness  was  unmistakeable  —  the  kindly  inten- 
tion. Lady  Penstephen  made  a  place  for  Mary  on  the  sofa 
beside  her,  and  may  be  said  to  have  devoted  herself  to  her. 
Mary,  gentle  always,  repented  her  of  her  recent  anger. 
She  reminded  herself  again  of  how  much  her  relation  had 
had  to  get  over  to  her.  She  was  doing  all  she  could  —  or, 
if  not  quite  all,  a  great  great  deal.  They  spoke  of  the 
christening  now  which  was  to  be  on  the  next  morning  but 
one.  They  discussed  the  arrangements.  Lady  Penstephen 
informing  or  suggesting,  Mary  vaguely  approving.  Miss 
Ingoldby  commenting  or  confirming,  even  occasionally 
contradicting. 

"Miss  Ingoldby  is  inclined  to  be  High  Church,"  Lady 
Penstephen  said  at  one  point. 


152  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"I  like  things  done  decently,"  said  Miss  Ingoldby  im- 
perturbably.  "I  don't  see  why  we  shouldn't  offer  the 
Almighty  the  best  we  have  in  outward  things  as  well  as 
in  spiritual." 

Mary  liked  the  relations  that  existed  between  these  two 
ladies.  The  conditions  spoke  well  for  each  of  them,  she 
thought.  Miss  Ingoldby  by  no  means  always  agreed  with 
Lady  Penstephen. 

"There  would  n't  be  surplices,"  she  said  to  Mary  now 
in  parenthesis,  "if  it  was  n't  for  me." 

Mary  smiled  but  said  nothing.  It  was  so  long  since  she 
had  heard  that  sort  of  talk.  Vestments;  the  Eastward 
Position.  She  used  to  hear  these  words,  surely,  long  long 
ago! 

"You  are  calling  him  John,"  Lady  Penstephen  said 
presently. 

"  His  name  is  John,"  Mary  said.  She  meant  that  he  had 
been  registered  as  John. 

The  two  ladies  beside  her  exchanged  glances. 

"She  said  that  exactly  like  Zacharias,"  was  what  they 
said  to  each  other  afterwards. 

Lady  Penstephen  was  making  a  scrap-work  screen.  The 
frame  itself,  fourfold  and  covered  with  canvas,  had  been 
made  by  the  village  carpenter.  Her  friends  collected  pic- 
tures for  her  —  odds  and  ends,  the  coloured  plates  from 
magazines  or  the  special  numbers  of  the  illustrated  weekly 
papers;  old  Christmas  cards,  valentines;  shiny  pictures 
from  the  covers  of  bon-bon  boxes  or  glove  boxes;  pictures 
from  advertisements;  decorative  oddments,  arabesques, 
initial  letters,  tail-pieces.  Nothing  came  amiss  to  the  het- 
erogeneous collection.  She  had  now  much  more  material 
than  she  could  use,  but  from  time  to  time  more  arrived. 

One  panel  was  finished.  It  was,  of  course,  a  panel 
spoiled,  the  plain  canvas  looking  much  better  than  that 
which  was  covered.  Nobody,  however,  thought  so,  for  in 
those  days  scrap-work  was  the  fashion. 

"When  the  whole  is  done  you  have  it  varnished,"  Miss 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  153 

Ingoldby  explained.  "I  believe  I  could  do  the  varnishing 
myself,  but  Lady  Penstephen  does  n't  trust  me." 

"It  would  be  such  a  pity  if  anything  went  wrong,  I  don't 
so  much  distrust  your  ability,  Posy,  as  your  varnish. 
Think,  if  it  was  sticky  and  would  n't  dry,  or  if  it  turned 
yellow  as  varnishes  so  often  do.  No,  I  shall  send  it  up 
to  London." 

The  situation  grew  momentarily  easier.  Even  Miss  In- 
goldby's  Christian  name  helped,  as  before  her  garden-hat 
and  her  spectacles  had  helped.  Mary  wondered  what  it  was 
short  for.  She  was  never  to  know,  for  she  never  heard  and 
she  never  asked.  All  the  same,  Posy  —  Posy  Ingoldby! 
Yes,  it  helped.  She  forgot  her  soreness. 

"Perhaps  Lady  Penstephen  would  like  to  do  some,"  Miss 
Ingoldby  suggested  tentatively. 

Do  some  what,  Mary  wondered  vaguely.  Susan  seemed 
to  know  for  she  said,  "Oh,  not  to-night.  She  is  tired  after 
her  journey.  It  would  try  her  eyes.  You  would  n't,  would 
you?  or  would  you?" 

Mary  protested  that  she  was  n't  tired. 

"We  generally  cut  out  in  the  evening.  Miss  Ingoldby 
and  I,  when  we  are  alone  — " 

"The  pictures,  you  know,"  said  Miss  Ingoldby —  "the 
scraps.  They  have  to  be  cut  out.  There  are  margins  and 
things." 

"Oh,  I  should  like  it,"  said  David's  mother. 

"Then  will  you  kindly  ring,"  said  Lady  Penstephen  to 
Miss  Ingoldby. 

Miss  Ingoldby  rang  —  twice,  Mary  noticed.  The  double 
ring  was  probably  an  indication  of  what  was  required,  for, 
when  the  footman  appeared,  he  carried  two  trays  which  he 
placed  upon  chairs  near  his  mistress.  The  trays  contained 
the  materials. 

"These,"  Lady  Penstephen  said,  "are  what  we  have 
still  to  do,  and  these  are  what  we  have  done." 

Scissors  were  brought  then  to  the  two  ladies  of  the  house, 
and  a  pair  found  for  the  visitor.    When  John  joined  the 


154  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

three  ladies,  a  few  minutes  later,  he  found  them  all  busily- 
snipping. 

Again  he  was  pleased.  Mary  met  his  eye  and  smiled  to 
him.  She  was  sorry  for  the  anger  which  he  had  not  per- 
ceived. She  wanted  him  to  know  that  all  had  gone 
smoothly  in  his  absence.  John  wanted  to  cut  out  also. 
Amid  jestings  and  banterings  he  too  was  provided  with 
scissors,  and  the  four,  the  three  women  and  the  man,  were 
presently  all  engaged  in  the  work.  A  family  picture  at  once. 

They  all  worked  in  different  ways:  John,  resolutely,  yet 
a  little  impetuously  —  running  his  scissors  where  it  was 
possible  up  a  Hue  without  moving  them  at  the  joint;  Susan 
Penstephen,  very  slowly  but  very  accurately,  never  making 
a  false  cut  or  needing  to  go  over  a  bit  a  second  time;  Miss 
Ingoldby,  in  a  business-like  mode  and  with  a  good  deal  of 
scissor  play,  like  a  barber,  who,  between  his  snippings, 
snips  in  the  air  as  if  to  keep  his  hand  in,  or  even  to  preserve 
unbroken  the  chain  of  sound;  Mary,  quietly  and  pains- 
takingly, neither  quickly  nor  slowly,  thinking  her  own 
thoughts,  but  intent,  nevertheless,  on  the  work  of  her 
fingers. 

Every  now  and  then  somebody  spoke. 

When  John's  scissors  moved  very  quickly  —  he  chose 
for  the  most  part  big  pictures  with  straight  edges  —  his 
cousin  looked  up  a  little  anxiously.  She  said  nothing  to 
him,  but  asked  Miss  Ingoldby  if,  snipping  as  she  did,  she 
was  not  afraid  she  would  snip  something  which  she  did  not 
intend  to  snip. 

"I  believe,"  she  said,  "in  hastening  slowly." 

"John,"  said  Mary,  "go  carefully." 

"Oh,  he  is  all  right,"  said  Lady  Penstephen. 

"It's  the  scissors,"  said  Miss  Ingoldby.  "They  sound 
as  if  they  were  running  away  with  me,  but  they're  not." 

Mary  suddenly  thought  of  Katinka  and  of  the  room  at 
Homburg  which  she  had  made  so  delightful  by  her  gentle 
enchantments.  This  was  her  sort  of  work.  How  she  would 
have  loved  it.   How  she  would  have  delighted  in  directing 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  i55 

the  young  scissors  of  David  and  Georgina.  'Ach,  not  so 
kvick  —  not  pressing  so  much  —  Softly  round  de  line  like 
dis.'  Mary  could  see  her,  hear  her.  Some  day,  she  thought, 
she  would  like  to  have  Katinka  near  her  again.  But  this 
she  knew  would  never  be.  Katinka  had  played  her  part  (as 
—  though  Mary  did  not  think  of  this  —  the  ladies  of  Brus- 
sels and  again  of  Homburg  had  played  theirs),  and  be- 
longed to,  though  actually  it  was  she  who  had  brought  to 
an  end,  the  days  of  the  wandering.  Mary  cut  for  a  moment 
blindly,  and  nearly  did  what  John,  for  all  his  haste,  had 
not  done. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "I  all  but  cut  it  in  half."  She  was  cut- 
ting out  a  horse.  "  I  stopped  myself  in  time.  But  how  care- 
less of  me." 

"My  dear,  it  would  n't  have  mattered." 

Miss  Ingoldby  asked  if  there  was  n't  somebody's  horse 
which  was  cut  in  half  —  some  horse  of  history  or  fable. 
She  searched  in  the  recesses  of  her  mind. 

No  one  remembered. 

It  was  then  Miss  Ingoldby  who  was  like  to  make  false 
cuts.  She  puckered  her  brow  as  she  racked  and  raked  her 
brain. 

Snip,  snip,  snip  went  the  four  pairs  of  scissors.  Snip, 
snip,  snip  —  rhythmic  sometimes  as  the  stitch,  stitch, 
stitch,  of  the  Song  of  the  Shirt. 

"How  the  scissors  hurt  the  base  of  your  thumb  when 
it  is  cardboard  you  are  cutting."  Lady  Penstephen  was 
struggling  with  the  top  of  a  chocolate  box. 

"Let  me,"  said  John. 

"  No,  I  've  nearly  done  it.  I  steam  these  off.  I  want  just 
to  make  it  small  enough  to  go  over  the  slop-basin  when  tea 
comes  in.    It  saves  so  much  trouble." 

The  servants  appeared  with  tea  almost  as  she  spoke. 
The  rather  elaborate  equipage  which  included  a  tea-caddy 
and  a  hissing  urn  into  which  at  the  last  moment  a  red  hot 
heater  had  been  dropped,  was  placed  on  a  table  near  the 
hearth.   Miss  Ingoldby  put  down  her  scissors  and  rose  at 


156  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

once.  She  shook  out  her  skirts  into  the  fender  and  went  to 
the  table. 

David's  mother  watched  the  process  of  the  tea-making 
much  as  David  himself  might  have  watched  it.  Miss  In- 
goldby  poured  boiling  water  into  the  tea-pot,  rinsed  it,  and 
warmed  all  the  cups.  She  then  unlocked  the  tea-caddy  — 
a  matter  of  form,  for  the  key  had  arrived  in  the  lock  and 
was  left  there  —  and  with  a  little  shell-shaped  spoon  which 
she  heaped  generously  she  put  the  delicious  smelling  leaves 
into  the  tea-pot.  She  turned  on  the  tap  of  the  urn  and  the 
pleasant  gurgling  sound  which  Betsy  had  once  described 
was  heard  in  the  tea-pot.  After  that  she  returned  to  her 
work  for  a  few  minutes,  which,  Mary  saw,  she  measured  by 
the  clock  on  the  mantelpiece.  At  an  exact  moment  she  put 
down  her  scissors  again  and  went  back  to  the  tea-table. 

"Tea,"  she  said.  An  announcement  not  an  interrogation. 

Lady  Penstephen  watched  for  the  moment  when  she 
might  have  the  use  of  the  slop-basin  for  steaming  her 
scraps,  as  a  dog  watches  for  a  promised  biscuit.  She  was 
happy  when  with  its  aid  she  was  enabled  to  peel  off  the 
waiting  pictures  from  the  stubborn  cardboard. 

So  the  evening  passed.  Towards  ten  o'clock  John  began 
to  fidget  a  little.  Mary,  who  knew  him,  felt  herself  to  be 
waiting. 

The  servants  came  back  and  cleared  away  the  tea- 
things.  Lady  Penstephen  kept  back  the  slop-basin  with 
which  she  had  not  quite  finished. 

"Give  us,"  Lady  Penstephen  said  to  the  butler,  "till  a 
quarter  past." 

"Very  good,  my  lady." 

He  bowed  and  withdrew.  John  put  down  his  scissors  and 
took  them  up  again. 

Lady  Penstephen  turned  to  Mary. 

"We  have  Prayers,"  she  said. 

Mary  said  "Yes?"  vaguely,  and  felt  herself  to  be  wait- 
ing. 

"John  may  have  told  you." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  157 

He  had  not. 

Lady  Penstephen  tried  the  edge  of  a  steaming  picture. 
It  came  away  a  little  from  the  cardboard  but  was  not  quite 
ready.  She  tried  another.  Mary  watched  it  as  it  peeled  off, 
curling  up  as  it  came  away  free. 

"They  come  off  so  easily,"  Lady  Penstephen  said,  "when 
they  are  quite  ready.  If  one  tries  to  force  them  they  only 
tear.  How  hot  this  water  is.  The  steam  quite  burns  me. 
I  don't  know,  Mary,  whether  you  would  care  to  join  us." 

She  did  not  look  up.  Mary  watched  her  fingers  as  she 
made  little  dabs  at  the  hot  wet  paper.  Miss  Ingoldby's 
scissors  went  snip,  snip,  snip.  John  cut  vigorously. 

Everyone  now  seemed  to  be  waiting,  though  the  work 
went  on.  Mary  noticed  many  things  in  the  room,  things 
which  she  had  seen  all  along  but  had  not  observed.  The 
carpet  had  roses  in  its  pattern.  There  were  some  big 
Italian  chairs  with  carved  gold  backs  and  arms.  The  great 
glass  chandelier,  in  which  the  candles  were  not  lighted,  must 
be  of  immense  weight.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  china  in 
and  on  the  cabinets,  and  two  groups  of  figures  on  each  side 
of  the  clock  on  the  mantelpiece  were  specially  beautiful. 

"You  must  do  exactly  as  you  like,"  Lady  Penstephen 
was  saying. 

What  Mary  wanted  greatly  to  know,  but  would  not  ask, 
was  whether  John  when  he  was  at  Ettringham  attended 
Prayers.  A  hush  seemed  to  her  to  have  come  over  the 
room.  Lady  Penstephen  bent  over  her  work,  but  not  more 
than  before.  Her  widow's  cap  was  very  white  against  the 
quite  different  white  of  her  face. 

"Yes,"  Mary  said  at  last,  "I  think  I  should  like  to." 

John  did  not  move,  but  some  sort  of  tension  seemed  to 
be  relaxed. 

"Munchausen!"  said  Miss  Ingoldby  with  a  jerk. 

Lady  Penstephen  looked  towards  her. 

"Munchausen,"  she  said  again,  "don't  you  remember? 
The  horse.  I  knew  I  should  think  of  it  presently.  Cut  in 
two,  you  know,  by  the  portcullis." 


158  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"To  be  sure,"  said  John,  "Baron  Munchausen." 

Lady  Penstephen  slowly  pushed  the  bowl  from  her. 

"Do  you  know,"  she  said  solemnly,  "this  is  the  first 
time  that  I  realised  that  he  was  n't  an  Englishman." 

She  looked  round  at  them  all  with  a  pucker  of  laughter 
somewhere  behind  her  spectacles.  She  took  them  off  now 
and  Mary  saw  the  down-look  (one  eyelid  'catching'  a 
little)  as  she  sheathed  them  in  the  case  at  her  waist. 

"How?"  said  Miss  Ingoldby. 

"You'll  hardly  believe  it  of  me,"  she  said  gravely,  "but 
I  suppose  I  have  been  giving  him  his  seat  in  our  own  House 
of  Lords,  for  not  till  this  moment  have  I  known  that  he 
was  n't  called  Baron  Mun-Chawson." 

She  began  then  to  laugh  at  herself.  She  laughed  till  the 
tears  stood  in  her  eyes. 

"Baron  Mun-Chawson!"  she  repeated. 

Mary  was  quite  sure,  now,  that  she  liked  her.  She  even 
understood  in  a  measure  John's  wish  to  please  her.  They 
were  all  still  laughing  at  nothing  when  the  butler  appeared. 

"A  quarter-past  ten,  my  lady." 

"Very  well.  Barton." 

He  withdrew.  Lady  Penstephen,  recovering  her  gravity 
at  once,  rose  and  she  and  Miss  Ingoldby  shook  out  their 
skirts  into  the  fender.  Mary  followed  suit.  Then,  Lady 
Penstephen  leading,  the  four  made  their  way  through  two 
dimly  lighted  rooms  to  what  Mary  saw  must  be  the  library. 

A  lamp  stood  on  a  table  at  the  far  end  of  it.  Lady  Pen- 
stephen seated  herself  at  this  table,  took  out  the  spectacles 
she  had  just  put  away,  adjusted  them,  and  opened  the 
books.  She  found  her  places.  Armchairs  were  on  each  side 
of  her  and  in  these  the  others  seated  themselves,  John  and 
Mary  on  one  side,  Miss  Ingoldby  on  the  other.  There  was 
a  pause.  Then  a  side  door,  at  the  end  of  the  room  at  which 
they  had  entered,  opened,  and  there  came  in  a  long  pro- 
cession of  servants,  who  ranged  themselves  in  order  on 
chairs  which  had  been  placed  to  receive  them.  There  was 
a  rustling,  a  creaking,  and  then  silence. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  159 

What  was  John  thinking?  That  was  what  David's 
mother  was  wondering.  It  was  evident  to  her  now,  that 
he  had  attended  Prayers  when  he  had  stayed  at  Ettringham 
without  her.  It  was  odd  that  he  had  not  told  her.  Yet  it 
was  not  odd.  What  was  he  thinking,  though?  What  did  he 
think?  Again  she  felt  wounded,  —  hurt  somewhere  deep 
down  in  her  soul.  So  deeply,  however,  that  she  did  not 
know  the  nature  of  the  wound,  nor  could  she  even  gauge 
the  extent  of  her  suffering.  So  might  one  suffer  under  an 
incomplete  anaesthetic;  so  did  one  suffer  sometimes  when 
one  yet  spoke  of  one's  pain  as  numbed.  It  was  not  that  she 
did  not  wish  to  be  there,  or  wish  him  to  be  there.  Had 
she  not  ached  often  and  often  for  the  consolation  which  she 
knew  others  found  in  religious  exercises,  —  yes,  and  in  reli- 
gion? Had  she  not  wished  in  her  heart  that  her  children 
might  not  be  denied  what  had  been  denied  to  her  —  what 
she,  perhaps,  had  denied  to  herself? 

The  incident  of  their  forbidden  young  prayers  —  Betsy 
and  her  pious  leanings,  yearnings,  nay,  in  this  instance, 
strivings  —  had  been  a  very  real  thing  to  her.  With  Betsy 
she  had  wished  them  to  learn  to  pray.  Who  had  forbidden 
that?  Yet  why  should  it  make  her  sore  to  see  David's 
father  acquiescing,  howsoever  passively,  in  what  stood  for 
that  which  she  secretly  had  desired  and  he  had  opposed? 
Ought  she  not  rather  to  be  glad? 

What  was  he  thinking? 

There  were  eleven  servants.  She  had  counted  them  half- 
consciously  as  they  filed  to  their  places.  Their  faces,  when 
she  glanced  in  their  direction,  were  whiter  dimnesses  in  the 
dimness  of  the  end  of  the  big  room.  The  cook,  who  sat  next 
to  Lady  Penstephen's  maid  Denham,  looked  a  very  small 
person  to  be  at  the  head  of  the  large  household.  She  was  the 
smallest  person  in  the  room,  Mary  thought  —  half  the  size 
of  both  the  young  women  whom,  from  their  lowly  position 
in  the  row,  she  judged  to  be  the  kitchen  maids. 

Lady  Penstephen,  quite  unconsciously  it  was  probable, 
assumed  a  strange  voice  when  she  read,  sounding  the  '  ed's' 


i6o  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

of  past  participles  and  even  changing  the  pronunciation  of 
a  word  or  two,  as  for  instance  when  she  said  'er-red '  in  the 
General  Confession,  the  'er'  as  in  'errand'  —  though,  else- 
where, Mary  felt  sure,  she  would  have  said  the  word  as  if 
it  had  been  spelt  'er'd.'  She  read,  that  is  to  say,  as  was  the 
fashion  then,  in  what  has  since  been  described  as  a  holy 
way,  and,  when  the  prayer  was  supplicatory,  addressed  the 
Almighty  in  a  tone  of  anguish.  If  she  had  been  a  dissenter 
she  would  have  prayed  with  groanings.  She  contrived,  as 
it  was,  to  make  some  of  the  prayers  from  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer  sound  as  if  they  had  been  ex  tempore  — 
yet  always  somehow  without  spoiling  their  beauty.  To 
"Lighten  our  darkness,  we  beseech  thee,  O  Lord,"  Mary, 
facing  the  sombre  leather  of  the  chair  against  which  she 
knelt  —  the  dimness  contributing,  the  night-feeling,  night 
thoughts  —  felt  her  heart  warm.  She  would  like  David, 
she  thought,  to  commit  himself  to  sleep  with  some  such 
words  as  these.  "Lighten  our  darkness,  we  beseech  thee, 
O  Lord ;  and  by  thy  great  mercy  defend  us  from  all  perils 
and  dangers  of  this  night;  for  the  love  of  thy  only  Son,  our 
Saviour,  Jesus  Christ.  Amen." 

And  then  the  Lord's  Prayer. 

She  had  been  ten  years  old  when  her  parents  had  broken 
away  from  convention  and  the  course  of  her  training  had 
been  changed.  Something  had  always  remained  to  her  of 
what  had  gone  before.  Did  the  root  of  her  unhappiness  lie 
in  that?  She  listened  to  the  words  as  in  a  dream. 

"Which  art  in  heaven  ..." 

Something  even  about  the  'Which.'  (David  presently, 
as  we  may  see,  was  to  feel  much  in  the  same  way.)  The 
words  came  to  her,  —  not  that  they  had  not  all  along  been 
familiar  to  her,  yet  as  across  a  great  distance.  She  knew 
them  intimately,  as  one  knows  the  cliches  of  everyday  talk, 
but  she  heard  them  freshly. 

"Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread.  And  forgive  us  our 
trespasses,  as  we  forgive  them  that  trespass  against  us. 
And  lead  us  not  into  temptation,  but  deliver  us  from  evil. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  i6i 

For  thine  is  the  kingdom,  the  power,  and  the  glory.  For 
ever  and  ever.  Amen." 

The  model  prayer  for  all  time.  If  the  whole  thing  could 
have  been  left  there.  .  .  .  And  then  as  she  heard  the  next 
words  she  felt  that  she  did  not  quite  want  it  left  there. 

"The  peace  of  God  which  passeth  all  understanding  keep 
our  hearts  and  minds  in  the  knowledge  and  love  of  God  and 
of  his  Son  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord  .  .  ." 

That  could  not  be  spared.   Nor  this  surely  — 

"The  Lord  bless  us  and  keep  us.  The  Lord  make  his 
face  to  shine  upon  us  and  be  gracious  unto  us.  The  Lord 
lift  up  his  countenance  upon  us  and  give  us  peace,  both  now 
and  evermore.     Amen." 

She  heard  herself  say  'Amen'  to  that. 

She  was  still  in  her  dream  when  a  pushing-back  of  chairs 
and  a  scraping  of  feet  on  the  polished  boards  told  her  that 
Prayers  were  over. 

The  servants  trooped  out. 

Mary  did  not  look  at  David's  father  but  she  was  very 
conscious  of  him  —  conscious  too,  somehow,  that  he  would 
not,  if  possible,  speak  of  this  part  of  the  evening's  doings, 
or,  if  he  did,  that  he  would  do  so  superficially. 

They  went  back  to  the  drawing-room  which  felt  very 
light  and  warm  after  the  dim  library.  Lady  Penstephen 
finished  unpeeling  the  last  of  her  cardboard  pictures,  and 
put  it  with  the  others  that  she  had  done,  into  one  of  the 
china  ornaments,  there  to  dry  undisturbed.  Miss  Ingoldby 
gave  a  final  snip  or  two  to  the  figure  upon  which  she  had 
been  engaged  when  she  had  been  interrupted,  and  a  final 
series  of  snips  in  the  air,  and  then,  gathering  the  done  and 
the  undone  into  their  respective  trays,  she  put  these  one 
on  top  of  the  other  for  the  servants  to  put  away.  Despite 
the  careful  shakings-out,  a  litter  of  little  bits  of  paper 
lay  on  the  carpet.  In  the  hall  was  a  tray  of  silver  candle- 
sticks. 

There  was  a  fire,  Lady  Penstephen  told  John,  in  the 
smoking-room. 


i62  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

He  lighted  the  three  ladies'  candles  and  wished  his 
cousin  and  Miss  Ingoldby  good-night. 

So  passed  the  evening.  Lady  Penstephen  came  with 
Mary  to  her  room  to  see  for  herself  that  all  was  comfort- 
able. She  touched  things  here  and  there,  straightened  an 
ornament  on  the  mantelpiece,  poked  the  fire,  rearranged 
the  cushions  on  the  couch  at  the  foot  of  the  bed. 

She  asked  again  if  Mary  was  sure  that  she  had  every- 
thing that  she  wanted,  and  Mary,  one  thing  being  so  griev- 
ously lacking,  assured  her  that  she  had. 

"Then  I'll  say  good-night  to  you,"  Lady  Penstephen 
said.  She  looked  about  for  her  candle.  Ah,  to  be  sure,  on 
the  table.  She  had  extinguished  it  as  she  came  in  —  there- 
by, perhaps,  causing  Mary  to  think  she  was  going  to  stop 
for  that  talk  which,  as  holding  potential  balm  for  her 
wounded  spirit,  she,  Mary,  would  have  welcomed  so 
heartily. 

"Everything,  thank  you,"  Mary  said  again,  disap- 
pointed. 

"Good-night." 

"Good-night." 

The  two  ladies  exchanged  kisses. 


CHAPTER   III 

It  was  long  before  David's  mother  slept  that  night. 
John  came  up  about  an  hour  later,  and,  for  the  first  time 
in  her  life,  Mary,  that  she  might  not  have  to  talk,  that  she 
might  not  be  tempted  to  talk,  and  also  in  a  measure  to 
spare  him  embarrassment,  pretended  to  be  asleep.  She  was 
touched  when  he  bent  over  her  and  kissed  her  ever  so 
lightly. 

When  by  the  sound  of  his  regular  breathing  she  knew 
that  he  slept,  she  lay  with  wide-open  eyes  and  watched  the 
firelight  play  on  the  ceiling.  All  sounds  ceased  in  the  house. 
The  stillness  grew  intense.  The  hours  passed;  she  heard 
them  strike,  up  to  three,  from  some  outdoor  clock  in  one 
of  the  buildings.  She  found  it  next  day  —  a  black-faced 
clock  with  weather-worn  hands,  over  the  stables.  After 
three  o'clock  she  must  have  slept. 

There  were  Morning  Prayers,  but  these  were  held  before 
breakfast  and  were  over  when  she  and  John  came  down  the 
next  day.  Lady  Penstephen  and  Miss  Ingoldby  were  in  the 
dining-room.  The  urn  had  just  been  brought  in,  and  with 
it  the  post-bag  which  Lady  Penstephen  unlocked  when  she 
had  greeted  her  guests,  and  from  which  she  proceeded  then 
to  dispense  the  letters. 

"You  slept  v/ell,  I  hope?" 

John  answered  for  them  both. 

"And  Baby?" 

Baby  had  had  an  excellent  night. 

Though  they  had  left  home  but  the  day  before  there  was 
already  a  letter  from  Ellen,  who  interpreted  her  instruc- 
tions to  write  every  day  quite  literally,  to  say  that  all  was 
well  in  Cheyne  Walk. 

It  was  a  lovely  morning  of  early  summer.  The  chilliness 


i64  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

which  had  made  fires  so  welcome  the  day  before  was  quite 
gone,  though  it  would  come  back,  Lady  Penstephen 
prophesied,  by  the  evening,  and  sunlight  streamed  in 
through  the  windows.  Mary,  heartened  by  it  and  by  her 
letter,  felt  her  spirits  rising.  The  room  was  delightful. 
English  food  after  the  years  of  the  foreign  hotels  and  apart- 
ments was  still  delicious  to  her.  She  was  interested  as  a 
child  in  what  was  about  her.  There  was  a  silver  egg-boiler 
presided  over  by  Miss  Ingoldby,  which  pleased  her  greatly, 
and  it  was  as  much  for  the  sake  of  seeing  it  in  operation  as 
for  the  sake  of  the  egg  laid  that  morning  that  she  smiled 
her  thanks  to  Miss  Ingoldby's  nodded  invitation. 

"Two,"  said  Miss  Ingoldby  persuasively,  "we're  so 
proud  of  our  eggs." 

"Oh,  one,"  said  Mary,  with  bacon  already  on  her  plate. 

"But  John  will  have  two,"  said  Lady  Penstephen. 

A  friendly  atmosphere.  Everything  very  simple,  but 
everything  very  perfect  of  its  kind.  The  heavy  tea-pot  was 
Georgian ;  the  cups  Worcester,  and  as  rare  as  many  of  those 
which  were  treasured  in  the  cabinets.  Mary  thought  to  her- 
self that  she  liked  using  beautiful  things.  The  tea-caddy, 
with  the  key  in  it,  was  beside  Lady  Penstephen  who  had 
evidently  made  the  tea  in  the  room.  The  urn  was  still  hiss- 
ing and  steaming.  It,  too,  was  very  beautiful.  All  these 
things,  with  even  the  pleasant  smell  of  coffee  and  of  hot 
rolls,  had  their  part  in  lifting  the  weight  from  Mary's  heart. 

"I  thought  we  would  drive  this  afternoon,"  Lady  Pen- 
stephen was  saying.  "This  morning  you  would  like  per- 
haps to  see  the  house  and  the  gardens." 

Mary  said  she  would  like  that  —  like  both  those  pro- 
posals, and  spoke  of  the  view  from  the  windows  of  her 
room.  She  had  hardly  known  that  a  country  without  hills 
could  be  so  lovely. 

Lady  Penstephen  was  Warwickshire-born  and  said 
"Isn't  it?  Isn't  it?"  and  looked  at  Miss  Ingoldby.  "Miss 
Ingoldby,"  she  said,  "is  a  Sussex  woman  and  won't  admit 
our  good  looks." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  165 

"Oh,  I'll  admit  them  with  pleasure,"  said  Miss  Ingoldby, 
"but  give  me  hills,  give  me  downs.  Give  me  something  to 
dimb." 

Lady  Penstephen  smiled  at  her  afifectionately.  Mary 
could  see  that  she  was  very  fond  of  her  companion. 

"Your  native  heath  before  mine,  Posy." 

"That's  it,"  said  Miss  Ingoldby,  smiling  back  at  her. 
"But  Ettringham  I  concede  to  you."  She  turned  to  the 
other  Lady  Penstephen.  "There's  something  about  Et- 
tringham. You'll  see  what  I  mean  —  you'll  feel  it." 

"I  think  I  do  already,"  said  Mary. 

John  looked  pleased.  So  did  Lady  Penstephen,  the 
widow. 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "Everyone  feels  it.  There's  some- 
thing about  Ettringham." 

When  breakfast  was  over  the  two  ladies  of  the  house, 
excusing  themselves  on  the  plea  of  household  matters 
which  would  claim  them  for  half  an  hour,  disappeared,  and 
John  and  Mary  were  left  alone. 

"Come  out  into  the  garden,"  said  John,  and  led  the  way 
by  a  side  door  on  to  the  terrace  outside. 

The  beautiful  flat  country  lay  before  them,  and  de- 
lighted Mary  again,  —  pasture  —  pasture  everywhere,  and 
trees.  There  was  a  humming  of  bees,  a  slow  cawing  of 
rooks,  the  cooing  of  amorous  pigeons.  All  the  influences  of 
the  morning  were  pleasant. 

"How  could  you  ever  have  said  she  was  ridiculous?" 
she  asked,  speaking  with  her  thoughts  for  context. 

Her  eyes  travelled  over  the  landscape  from  point  to 
point.  The  whole  world  seemed  to  be  green. 

"You  like  her  too,"  John  said.  "I  knew  you  would  like 
her." 

And  then  at  the  corner  of  the  house,  at  a  point  where 
Victoria  across  the  centuries  shook  hands  most  improbably 
with  the  second  Charles,  they  came  upon  Betsy  bearing 
her  precious  charge  for  his  airing. 

She  raised  his  veil,  and  his  mother  bent  over  him.   His 


i66  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

eyes  were  open  and  he  jerked  in  Betsy's  arms  and  smiled, 
and  his  mother's  heart  swelled  with  love  for  him.  He  had 
caused  her  the  greatest  sorrow  she  had  known  yet,  but  as 
he  smiled  she  forgot  everything  except  that  he  was  flesh  of 
her  flesh. 

"Give  him  to  me,  Betsy." 

She  held  him  to  her,  laughing  into  his  funny  little  eyes, 
but  inwardly  yearning  over  him.  He  ought  to  have  been  a 
girl.  On  every  count  he  ought  to  have  been  a  girl.  But  — 
oh,  David,  forgive  her! —  there  was  that,  after  all,  in  having 
brought  a  man-child  into  the  world  which  made  her  know 
that,  come  what  might,  she  would  not  have  changed  him 
now  if  a  miracle  had  given  her  the  power  to  do  so. 

She  gave  him  back  hurriedly  to  Betsy. 

Presently  the  two  ladies  joined  them.  Lady  Penstephen 
now  wore  over  her  dress  a  brown  hoUand  apron  with  ca- 
pacious pockets  bound  and  outlined  with  red  braid,  and 
on  her  head  a  garden-hat  of  the  shape  known  as  'Dolly 
Varden.'  Miss  Ingoldby,  in  her  garden-hat  also,  carried, 
with  her  flat  wooden  basket,  a  pair  of  shears.  The  idea  of 
benevolent  snipping  was,  it  seemed,  always  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  Miss  Ingoldby. 

These  were  the  days  when  care  of  the  complexion  —  the 
protection  of  it,  that  is,  from  the  influences  of  sun  and 
wind  —  was  looked  upon  in  the  light  of  almost  a  religious 
obligation,  and  Lady  Penstephen,  at  the  sight  of  the  hat- 
less  Mary,  held  up  her  hands  in  horror. 

"  My  dear,  the  sun ! "  she  said.  "  Your  complexion.  You'll 
ruin  it  —  ruin  it.  Let  John,  I  beg  of  you,  fetch  your 
hat." 

Mary  was  for  shaking  her  head.  She  was  endowed  with 
a  healthy  skin  and  took  no  thought  for  it.  But  as  she  saw 
that  Lady  Penstephen  was  really  exercised  about  her  lack 
of  caution,  she  sufl'ered  the  hat  to  be  fetched  —  John,  with 
a  twinkle  for  her,  volunteering  to  go  for  it  —  and,  like  an 
obedient  child,  she  put  it  on  when  it  arrived. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  167 

Thus  equipped  she  was  led  through  the  gardens.  The 
morning  passed  delightfully. 

But  afterwards  Mary  found  that,  as  before,  something  all 
through  had  been  overlooked,  or  withheld,  or  barred-out. 
In  spite  of  herself  she  began  now  again  to  watch  and  to 
wait  for  mention  of  her  two  other  children.  During  the 
drive  that  afternoon  Lady  Penstephen  did  not  name  either 
of  them.  She  spoke  of  Baby,  with  the  most  capital  of  B's, 
continually,  but  David  and  Georgina,  for  any  sign  that  she 
gave,  might  not  have  existed  at  all. 

Mary,  not  knowing  what  to  make  of  so  strange  a  reti- 
cence, felt  with  some  alarm  her  soreness  returning.  For 
John's  sake  she  wanted  this  visit  to  pass  off  successfully. 
A  tremendous  concession  had  been  made,  she  knew,  in  hav- 
ing her  there  at  all.  She  was  being  received  intimately  — 
warmly,  affectionately,  even.  The  trifling  incident  of  the 
hat  that  morning  shewed  the  personal  note  in  Susan's  rela- 
tions with  her.  Everything  shewed  it;  a  word,  a  look,  the 
unceremonious  evening  with  the  scraps  and  the  scissors. 
She  was 'accepted.'  But  her  children?  David?  Georgina? 
What  did  it  mean? 

She  went  up  to  her  room  with  lagging  steps.  The  beauty 
of  the  staircase  and  of  the  gracious  landings  and  passages 
said  nothing  to  her.  She  experienced  a  sudden  and  acute 
nostalgia  for  the  house  which  held  her  children;  for  Hom- 
burg;  for  odd  little  French  and  Italian  towns;  for  railway- 
stations,  trains,  hotel  omnibusses;  for  pass-ports,  tickets, 
the  aetna,  the  hoUand-covered  box;  for  the  sounds  of 
travel,  shuntings,  shoutings,  hootings,  whistles  —  for  the 
days  of  the  wandering,  the  old  distrusted  days  which  had 
yet  held  her  children  so  closely.  Those  seemed  the  safe  days 
now  —  the  unthreatened  days  even.  Her  heart  was  very 
heavy. 

And,  at  the  mercy  now  of  her  thoughts,  a  sort  of  nerv- 
ousness seized  her  as  the  hour  approached  for  dinner. 


i68  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

The  idea  of  meeting  strangers  oppressed  her  —  strangers 
too,  who,  strangers  as  they  were  to  her,  had  been  asked  to 
stand  in  intimate  relation  to  her  son.  She  suffered  Betsy  to 
dress  her,  when  the  time  came  for  dressing,  in  the  dress 
which  Betsy  had  decided  she  must  wear.  She  submitted  to 
Betsy's  choice  of  the  jewellery  which  was  to  adorn  her  for 
what  Betsy  insisted  on  calling  the  dinner-party.  But  when 
all  was  done  and  she  had  taken  her  fan  and  her  gloves 
from  her,  she  could  hardly  have  told  you  what  she  was 
wearing. 

Betsy,  though  all  was  indeed  done,  the  finishing  touches 
given,  pats,  smoothings,  straightenings,  lingered.  She  was 
like  a  chef  whose  efforts  have  not  been  appreciated.  It  was 
she,  though  she  did  not  know  it,  who  was  to  help  her  mis- 
tress to  get  through  the  evening. 

"Yes,  Betsy?" 

"Nothing,  m'lady.  That  is  if  you've  nothing  to  say?  I 
thought  myself — " 

David's  mother  turned  troubled  eyes  on  her. 

"  Not  so  much  as  a  look  in  the  glass.  Not  a  word.  It  is 
a  little  disheartening." 

"Betsy!" 

"Well,  is  n't  it,  m'lady?  And  you  looking  like  a  picture. 
It's  as  if  you  did  n't  care.  As  if  your  beautiful  looks  was 
wasted  on  you.  The  time  come  when  you  take  your 
rightful  place  in  the  world,  and  us  all  so  proud  of  you,  and 
no  more  interest  in  what  you  put  on  than  if  this,"  she 
touched  her  mistress's  dress  which  afforded  her  so  much 
satisfaction  and  which  she  had  helped  to  choose  and  design, 
"was  a  reach-me-down." 

Well,  she  would  go  through  with  it.  John  found  her 
smiling  when  he  came  in  from  his  dressing-room.  He,  at 
least,  said  what  pleased  Betsy,  for  he  declared  that  her  mis- 
tress had  never  looked  better. 

"There,  m'lady,  you  see," said  Betsy, appeased,  yet  still 
only  partly  appeased. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  169 

"I've  hurt  Betsy's  feelings,"  said  Mary,  "but  indeed, 
Betsy,  I  did  n't  mean  it.  I  think  you  do  wonders  with  me." 

"There  you  go,"  said  Betsy.  "Ah  no,  sir,  it's  enough  to 
make  one.  As  if  — "  with  privileged  exasperation  —  "the 
wonder  was  n't  in  your  ladyship's  self." 

But  Mary  was  smiling,  and  the  spirit  of  the  smile,  shew- 
ing the  diverted  thoughts,  took  her  to  the  drawing-room. 
What  matter,  after  all?  What  matter?  David,  if  she  knew 
him,  would  justify  himself. 

The  evening,  as  Lady  Penstephen  had  prophesied,  was 
chilly,  and  the  four  persons  whom  the  room  held  stood  by 
the  fire.  Archdeacon  and  Mrs.  Eversley  had  just  been  an- 
nounced. Mary  saw  a  little  old  man  with  white  hair  and 
shrewd  if  benevolent  eyes,  and  a  lady  whom  she  took  at 
first  to  be  of  the  rather  masterful  kind.  But  even  her  sen- 
sitiveness could  find  no  fault  with  their  reception  of  the  in- 
troduction when  it  was  made.  Lady  Penstephen  in  making 
it  said,  "My  dear  cousin.  Lady  Penstephen."  Both  re- 
sponded cordially.  Nor,  Mary  saw,  did  the  lady  look  at 
her  unduly.  John  they  both  knew.  If  there  was  a  shade 
of  reserve  in  their  manner  this  was  kept  for  him.  Mary 
would  have  said  that  time  had  been  when  they  had  dis- 
approved of  him  very  gravely.  But  the  reserve,  if  at  all  it 
existed,  was  generally  imperceptible.  Mary  may  even  have 
imagined  it,  and  before  the  evening  was  over  she  believed 
that  she  had. 

There  was  a  little  desultory  talk  about  nothing  in  par- 
ticular, and  then  the  remaining  guest  was  announced,  and 
the  party  was  complete. 

Mary  looking  round  the  dinner  table  saw  that  she  need 
not  have  felt  nervous.  The  two  old  men,  representing  the 
Church,  and,  less  directly  perhaps,  the  World,  who  had 
undertaken  to  be  sponsors  for  her  little  son,  inspired  con- 
fidence, and  there  was  nothing  in  the  manner  of  either  of 
them  to  suggest  that  the  circumstances  were  felt  to  be 


I70  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

other  than  usual.  This,  of  course,  is  to  say  no  more  than 
that  Lady  Penstephen's  two  friends  were  gentlemen,  but 
Mary,  who  had  suffered  so  grievously,  had  not  suffered  for 
nothing. 

"I've  known  John  from  a  boy,"  General  Burke  said. 
"It  delights  me  to  be  godfather  to  his  son." 

The  Archdeacon,  talking  to  her  later,  said  much  the  same 
thing,  and  if  he,  upon  his  part,  conveyed  that  what  really 
made  him  happier  was  that  John  should  come  at  last  to  see 
need  for  godfathers,  he  did  this  so  tactfully  that  there  was 
nothing  in  his  words  that  savoured  of  preaching. 

And  as  the  evening  passed  pleasantly  Mary  saw  that, 
though  none  of  the  three  attempted  to  understand,  each 
was  ready  unreservedly  to  accept  her.  The  past  was  done 
with:  this  was  the  unspoken  attitude  towards  it  and  her  — 
a  generous,  and,  for  the  dark  and  narrow  seventies,  an 
exceptional  attitude  as  she  knew.  If,  she  felt,  she  could  but 
know  that  David  and  Georgina  were  accepted  with  her  she 
would  be  happy.  Well,  she  was  to  be  happy  for  this  eve- 
ning. The  three  strangers  severally  asked  her  for  and  about 
her  other  children,  and  her  relation,  though  she  made  no 
comment  or  enquiries  upon  her  own  account,  patted  her 
hand,  when  in  answering  some  question  of  Mrs.  Eversley's 
about  David,  Mary  shewed  perhaps  something  of  her 
heart.  Then  Mary,  if  she  could  not  quite  forgive  her,  felt 
at  least  partly  appeased  —  though,  like  Betsy,  whose 
grievance  she  now  suddenly  comprehended,  not  more,  even 
then,  when  all  was  weighed  and  considered,  than  partly 
appeased!  Still,  on  the  whole  and  in  howsoever  qualified  a 
measure,  happy. 

"Those  nice  people,"  she  said  when  they  were  gone. 
"That  nice  Mrs.  Eversley.  I  was  n't  sure  at  first  whether 
she  was  n't  going  to  be  a  little  alarming.  But  she  is  n't 
alarming  at  all.  And  the  Archdeacon  who  looks  like  a 
Bellini  saint  —  yes,  and  your  nice  General  Burke." 

"My  dear,  they  were  charmed  with  you.  They  all  man- 
aged to  say  so  before  they  went." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  171 

Yes,  on  the  whole  a  very  happy  evening.  The  next  day 
the  baby  was  christened  —  'John,'  as  he  had  already  long 
since  been  named  —  and,  on  the  day  following,  the  visitors, 
to  the  tune  of  repeated  expressions  of  good-will  upon  both 
sides,  thankings,  renewed  invitations,  and  the  like,  re- 
turned to  London. 

"I  am  so  glad  to  know  you,  my  dear  Mary,"  were 
Susan's  last  words,  "and  to  know  our  little  John  here. 
We  must  see  a  great  deal  of  him  by  and  by  at  Ettringham. 
I  expect  great  things  of  him.  His  godmother  is,  and  is  going 
to  be,  very  proud  of  him." 

John  shewed  his  pleasure  and  Mary  hers.  But,  deep 
down  in  her  heart,  and  not  to  be  shaken  by  the  fact  that 
before  a  month  was  out  her  other  two  children  (at  their 
father's  wish)  had  been  christened  also,  Mary  had  the 
knowledge  that  she  and  they  —  and  somehow  especially 
she  and  David  —  had  once  and  for  all  been  betrayed. 


CHAPTER   IV 

Was  it  Katinka  and  the  Homburg  actings?  Was  it  the 
element  of  drama  that  the  peculiar  conditions  of  his  wan- 
dering life  had  made  an  essential  factor  of  it?  Was  it  his 
first  pantomime  which  he  had  seen  that  year  —  at  Astley's 
(Betsy's  treat  this!)  in  the  Westminster  Bridge  Road  — 
and  which  he  was  never  to  forget?  Or  was  it  something 
deeper?  Part  of  him?  Something  that  ran  in  his  blood? 
David  knew  if  no  one  else  did.  All  the  mysteries  were  here. 

He  was  eleven  when  he  began  to  know ;  at  school  in  ear- 
nest in  his  first  term,  and  something  had  happened.  Some- 
thing had  happened  at  the  very  outset.  The  inevitable 
"What's  your  father?"  of  the  first  few  bewildering  min- 
utes had  led  to  an  incomprehensible  situation  which,  if  it 
was  not  to  endure  for  very  long,  was  yet  to  taint  all 
memories  of  his  school-days  with  vague  discomfort.  They 
—  his  school-days  —  were  not  to  be  unhappy.  After  the 
first  few  weeks  they  were  indeed  to  be  quite  tolerable,  but 
always,  behind  what  negative  or  even  positive  happiness 
they  gave  him,  there  was  to  be  the  recollection  of  the  thing 
which  had  given  him  so  false  a  start.  Something  had  been 
said.  That  it  should  be  possible  that  something  could  be 
said !   The  sting  lav  there. 

"What's  your  father?" 

The  big  bullying  boy  of  every  school,  of  every  story  of 
any  school,  the  conventional,  na}^  the  traditional  bully 
asked  it,  and  had  to  ask  twice,  for  David  had  not  under- 
stood. 

"How  do  you  mean,  what  is  he?" 

"How  do  I  mean,  what  is  he?"  David's  shy  treble  was 
mimicked,  to  a  roar  from  a  gallery  of  little  asses,  not  one  of 
whom,  maybe,  was  actually  ill-disposed  towards  him. 

"What  is  he,  you  young  fool?   Is  he  in  the  Army?" 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  173 

"No." 

"Or  the  Navy?" 

"No." 

"Well,  is  he  in  the  Civil  Service  or  at  the  Bar?" 

David  did  not  think  so.  The  idea  had  never  occurred  to 
him.  Had  your  father  to  be  something?  It  seemed  so. 
His  dame-school  had  been  too  young  and  too  ladylike  a 
place  for  such  blunt  questionings, 

"He's  a  gentleman  at  large,  I  suppose."  Our  assertive 
friend  was  being  funny,  and  the  gallery  laughed  again. 

David  supposed  so.  He  had  not  the  vaguest  notion  of 
what  At  Large  meant.  He  knew  what  Gentleman  meant. 
His  father  was  one.  He  was  one  himself.  He  did  not  believe 
that  the  good-looking  boy  who  was  baiting  him  was  or 
could  be.  He  conceived  an  immortal  hatred  of  him  —  a 
hatred  that  hurt  because  the  bullying  boy  was  good-look- 
ing, and  it  was  always  dreadful  to  him  not  to  worship  any 
one  who  pleased  his  eye. 

"Well,  what's  he  called,  anyu'ay?" 

"How  do  you  mean,  called?" 

David,  it  must  be  admitted,  was  not  doing  himself  jus- 
tice. 

"  How  do  I  mean,  called  ?  "  An  opportunity  again,  it  will 
be  seen,  for  the  mimic.   The  gallery  shouted. 

David  was  told  he  was  green. 

"  Is  he  Mister,  you  young  fool.  Or  is  he  a  parson,  or  per- 
haps he's  a  doctor?" 

"He  was  Mister." 

"Oh,  he  was  Mister,  was  he?  And  what  is  he  now?" 

"Sir  John,"  said  David  at  last,  getting  very  red. 

"Oh,  he's  Sir  John,  is  he?  Well,  why  did  n't  you  say  so 
at  first?" 

David  did  n't  know. 

"  Is  he  a  baronet  or  only  a  knight,"  somebody  asked;  and 
the  good-looking  boy  said,  "I  bet  he's  only  a  knight." 

"You're  quite  wrong,"  David  said  to  that.  He  did,  it 
happened,  know  the  difference  between  the  one  and  the 


174  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

other.  You  could  n't  inherit  a  knighthood,  and  his  father 
had  inherited. 

"Are  you  the  eldest?"  was  the  next  question,  and  David 
said  that  he  was. 

"Then,  when  your  father  dies  you'll  be  Sir  Thingamy 
Penstephen." 

David  supposed  so,  but  so  low  that  he  was  n't  heard. 

"What  does  he  say?" 

"  He  says  when  his  father  dies  he  '11  be  Sir  Thingamy  P." 

That  was  all,  for  the  moment.  The  common  attention 
fastened  on  to  something  or  to  somebody  else,  and  David, 
only  smarting  a  little,  was  released  from  the  inquisition. 
But  the  thing  was  n't  over.  What  he  was  said  to  have  said 
was  repeated.  The  good-looking  boy  was  a  day-boy,  and 
may  have  talked  at  home.  His  parents  may  have  pricked 
up  their  ears  and  talked  too.  Nothing  dreadful  happened, 
but  it  became  known  in  the  school  that  there  was  some- 
thing about  young  Penstephen  —  something  about  his 
father;  something  vaguely  discreditable.  He  must  be  one 
of  those  Penstephens  was  what  the  good-looking  boy's 
father  may  have  said,  looking,  let  us  suppose,  at  the  good- 
looking  boy's  mother  —  (some  particular  Penstephens,  it 
would  seem,  differing  from  all  other  Penstephens)  —  and 
if  so,  poor  boy  .  .  .  well  .  .  .  H'm  .  .  .  Ha  .  .  .  But  Sir 
Thingamy  P.,  eh?  Sir  Thingamy  P.,  eh?  That  was  just 
what  .  .  .  However,  the  poor  boy  himself  had  done  nothing 
and  we  must  n't  be  uncharitable.  One  could  n't,  of  course, 
help  wondering  whether  he  would  be  quite  a  desirable  com- 
panion for  other  boys.  Still  .  .  . 

Thus  and  thus.  But  quite  enough  to  make  talk  in  a 
school.  Quite  enough  to  mark  David  out  from  the  rest. 
He  found  himself  saddled  with  a  nickname,  and  would 
not  have  minded  that,  if  something  which  he  did  not  under- 
stand and  which  even  some  of  those  who  employed  it  did 
not  understand  either,  had  not  quite  obviously  lain  behind 
it.  It  was  as  if  the  name  was  given  negatively  —  given  to 
him  because  it  was  not  (as  of  course  it  was  not)  his. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  175 

Well,  the  incident  passed  —  more  or  less.  He  was 
wounded  and  bore  a  scar,  but  other  things  cropped  up  to 
occupy  his  exercised  thoughts.  Difficulties  in  so  many 
directions  confronted  him,  —  difficulties  which,  owing  to 
the  peculiarities  of  his  up-bringing,  were  incalculable.  How 
could  he  do  himself  justice?  Everywhere  he  found  him-, 
self  astray  or  up  against  what  was  unfamiliar  to  him. 
Chapel!  Misery.  He  did  not  know  how  to  behave  in 
Chapel. 

His  father,  sending  him  to  school,  had  withdrawn  all 
restrictions.  How  handicapped  he  was  we  may  guess. 
There  was  a  ritual  and  he  did  not  know  it.  He  set  his 
teeth  and  aped  what  the  others  did,  only  to  discover  that 
there  were  things  that  no  mere  copying  would  cover.  He 
could  not  find  his  places.  There  were  some  awful  moments 
during  which  he  was  conscious  of  nothing  but  a  boy  next 
to  him  who  was,  and  who  had  been,  watching  him.  Then, 
"Can't  you  read?'^  whispered  the  boy,  and  he  whispered 
back  angrily  that  of  course  he  could  read.  But  he  could 
not  pretend  to  be  able  to  find  the  Psalms,  nor  presently 
the  Te  Deum,  nor,  when  the  time  came  for  the  Litany, 
the  Litany.  Shame  dyed  his  cheeks.  He  hated  the  boy 
who  watched  him.  He  had  presently  to  hate  many  more. 
He  would  have  enjoyed  Chapel  (it  had  even  to  do  with  his 
discovery)  if  he  had  not  felt  that  any  false  move  would 
betray  him  —  that  his  hesitations  were  betraying  him, 
had  betrayed  him.  He  forestalled  the  questions  that  would 
be  put  to  him.  Why  could  n't  he  find  the  Psalms?  Why 
was  he  left  standing  up  that  time  —  well,  nearly  left — • 
when  all  the  rest  were  sitting?  Why  had  he  scrambled 
to  his  feet  when  he  ought  to  have  been  kneeling?  Shame 
unspeakable ! 

And  all  the  time  he  was  doing  so  well.  Inevitable  that 
he  should  make  some  mistakes;  little  short  of  wonderful 
that  he  should  make  so  few! 

What  the  boy  said  afterwards  was,  "I  believe  you're  a 
dissenter." 


176  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"A  what?"  said  David. 

"A  dissenter  —  Chapel,  you  know." 

David  was  further  astray,  but  (or  and)  closed  on  the 
word  Chapel.  This  was  Chapel,  was  n't  it? 

"It's  called  Chapel  here  because  they  always  are  in 
schools,  but  it's  Church,  of  course,  really.  Church  of  Eng- 
land. I  believe  you're  a  Methodist  or  a  Wesleyan  or  a 
Plymouth  Brother  or  something.  Yes,  you  are.  If  you 
aren't  you'd  know  how  to  find  the  Psalms.  Then,  why 
could  n't  you?  It  wasn't  as  if  it  was  one  of  those  days 
when  you  have  Proper  Psalms  —  you  know.  Proper 
Psalms  Appointed  for  this  Morning  —  when  you  have  to 
find  them  by  the  Roman  numbers,  X's  and  L's  and  C's. 
It  was  just  an  ordinary  day  of  the  month." 

David  had  nothing  to  say  —  or  a  great  deal  too  much ! 
—  so  very  wisely  held  his  peace.  But  he  felt  deeply  humili- 
ated. He  contrived  the  next  day  to  smuggle  a  prayer- 
book  out  of  Chapel  with  him  and  set  himself  resolutely  to 
learn  to  find  his  way  about  its  pages.  This,  so  little  privacy 
has  a  boy  at  school,  he  had  to  do  at  odd  times  and  in  the 
strangest  places.   Difficulties,  perplexities,  humiliations. 

Then,  suddenly  a  change.  Chapel,  from  being  terrible, 
became  a  delight  to  him.  He  was  too  aloof  from  conven- 
tional religious  exercises  for  the  real  spirit  of  them  to  take 
hold  of  him,  or  even  to  mean  much  to  him,  but  the  beauty 
of  the  Services  themselves  made  a  powerful  impression 
on  him.  The  sound  of  the  rolling  sentences  was  a  joy  to 
him.  Afterwards  he  knew  that  what  he  was  to  mean  later 
by  the  Theatre  —  the  Theatre  in  the  French  sense  —  was 
here  also. 

Rend  your  heart  and  not  your  garments  and  turn  unto  the 
Lord  your  God;  for  he  is  gracious  and  merciful,  slow  to  anger, 
and  of  great  kindness,  and  repentelh  him  of  the  evil. 

To  the  Lord  our  God  belong  mercies  and  forgivenesses, 
though  we  have  rebelled  against  him:  neither  have  we  obeyed 
the  voice  of  the  Lord  our  God,  to  walk  in  his  laws  which  he 
set  before  us. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  177 

/  will  arise,  and  go  to  my  father,  and  will  say  unto  him. 
Father,  I  have  sinned  against  heaven  and  before  thee,  and  am 
no  more  worthy  to  he  called  thy  son. 

This  one  particularly.  Consider.  These  things  came  to 
him  newly.  No  'Line  upon  Line'  had  prepared  him  for 
them;  no  'Peep  o'  Day'  opened  his  eyes  to  the  wide 
range  of  what  lay  behind  them.  All  was  sheer  new  wonder 
to  him.  A  fresh  opening,  of  course,  for  the  enemy.  He  was 
interested  where  the  rest  were  bored,  and  .  .  .  well,  we  all 
know  boys! 

"Nineteenth  morning  of  the  month,  Sir  Thingamy  P. 
O  come  let  us  sing." 

"When  you  are  Sir  Thingamy  you'll  have  a  private 
chapel  of  your  own,  won't  you,  and  you'll  be  able  to  have 
service  all  day  long  if  you  like  and  say.  Oh,  ain't  the  collix 
lovely!  Which  do  you  like  best,  Thingamy,  the  Psalms 
or  the  sermon?" 

W^ell,  what  matter?  Let  the  tongues  wag. 

David  did  not  care  for  sermons.  He  did  like  the  Psalms. 
He  had  lighted  on  the  seventy-eighth  in  his  explorations 
and  it  had  thrilled  him. 

So  he  commanded  the  clouds  above,  and  opened  the  doors 
of  heaven. 

David  could  see  'Him'  doing  that. 

He  caused  the  east  wind  to  blow  under  heaven,  and  through 
his  power  he  brought  in  the  south-west-wind  .  .  . 

He  smote  their  cattle  with  hail-stones,  and  their  flocks  with 
hot  thunderbolts  .  .  . 

Hot  thunderbolts! 

He  cast  upon  them  the  furiousness  of  his  wrath,  anger, 
displeasure  and  trouble,  and  sent  evil  spirits  among  them  .  .  . 

Furiousness!  Evil  spirits! 

He  made  a  way  to  his  indignatio7i  and  spared  not  their 
soul  from  death,  but  gave  their  life  over  to  the  pestilence  .  .  . 

A  way  to  his  indignation.  The  word  Death.  The  word 
Pestilence. 

And  the  wonderful  hundred-and-seventh,  with  the  un- 


178  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

even  beat  of  its  refrain!  Young  as  he  was,  he  perceived  the 
unevenness  of  the  beat,  and  he  counted  the  verses  to  see 
exactly  how  uneven  it  was.  The  refrain  came  after  the 
seventh  verse,  he  found;  then  after  the  fourteenth;  then 
after  the  twentieth;  then  not  till  after  the  thirtieth;  and 
then,  when  your  ear  and  your  eye  had  got  accustomed  to 
its  uncertain  recurrence  and  watched  for  it  as  astronomers 
for  the  (surer)  return  of  a  comet,  it  came  no  more  at  all. 
This  in  itself  was  fascinating,  but  how  fascinating  (not 
David's  word,  but  what  David  meant!)  it  was.  How  — 
David's  word  had  to  be  'jolly'  —  then,  how  very  jolly! 

O  that  men  would  therefore  praise  the  Lord  for  his  good- 
ness, and  declare  the  wonders  that  he  doeth  for  the  children  of 
men. 

Nor  was  this  all.  The  Psalm  was  full  of  pictures. 

Such  as  sit  in  darkness  and  in  the  shadow  of  death,  being 
fast  bound  in  misery  and  iron. 

To  hear  such  words  for  the  first  time.  Think  of  it. 

They  that  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  and  occupy  their 
business  in  great  waters. 

(Can  we  be  sure  that  David  was  not  greatly  privileged?) 

These  men  see  the  works  of  the  Lord,  and  his  wonders 
in  the  deep. 

Wonders  in  the  deep! 

Pictures  of  the  sea  then: 

For  at  his  word  the  stormy  wind  ariseth  which  lifteth  up 
the  waves  thereof. 

They  are  carried  up  to  the  heaven,  and  down  again  to  the 
deep:  their  soid  melteth  away  because  of  the  trouble. 

They  reel  to  and  fro  and  stagger  like  a  drunken  man,  and 
are  at  their  wits  end. 

So  when  they  cry  unto  the  Lord  in  their  trouble  he  de- 
livereth  them  out  of  their  distress. 

Then  the  lovely  For  he  maketh  the  storm  to  cease  so  that 
the  waves  thereof  are  still;  and  the  thrice  lovely  (even  David 
knew  this !)  Then  are  they  glad  because  they  are  at  rest,  and 
so  he  bringeth  them  unto  the  haven  where  they  would  be. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  179 

0  that  men —  Yes,  the  refrain  came  there  right  enough. 
There  the  refrain  had  to  come  —  could  not  help  itself. 

Worth  being  laughed  at  to  be  so  happy?  David  made 
half  his  discovery  then.  There  were  compensations?  Cer- 
tainly there  were  compensations.  What  matter  if  there 
was  something  about  you?  If  you  were  n't  to  the  accepted 
pattern?  If  you  did  not  know  your  way;  had  to  go  cau- 
tiously where  others  were  sure-footed,  to  learn  by  painful 
experience  what  to  the  rest  was  second  nature  —  what 
matter  any  of  these  things  when  there  were  such  compen- 
sations? Nor  were  compensations  all.  There  were  sanc- 
tuaries. You  could  get  away.  You  could  get  where  they 
could  not  follow  you  —  where  they,  the  boys  to  scale  and 
to  pattern,  had  not  the  wit  to  follow  you.  You  were  free 
of  them  the  day  you  knew  that.  It  was  then  as  it  was  with 
Alice  in  Wonderland  when  she  said,  "You're  only  a  pack 
of  cards."   You  had  only  to  know. 

So,  more  slowly  than  most  boys,  but  also  quite  surely, 
David  settled  down.  He  was  never  to  be  entirely  popular, 
for  the  reasons  stated,  and  also  such  other  reasons  as  that 
he  spoke  French  too  well  for  an  Englishman,  'knew'  Ger- 
man, and  even  had  a  smattering  of  Italian.  But  he  had  all 
the  friends  he  wanted.  The  masters  liked  him,  and  the 
French  master,  since  David  was  the  only  boy  who  could 
answer  him  in  his  own  tongue  without  effort,  and  since, 
moreover,  he  was  perhaps  the  only  boy  in  the  school  who 
saw  nothing  to  laugh  at  in  the  fact  of  your  being  a  foreigner, 
shewed  a  marked  preference  for  him.  These  things,  in  the 
odd  boy-world,  went  also  against  him.  But  for  the  most 
part  he  had  managed  to  get  himself  accepted,  and,  because 
there  was  a  quiet  force  in  the  little  withdrawn  boy  which 
by  degrees  made  itself  felt,  accepted  upon  his  own  terms. 
He  would  have  his  own  terms  or  none.  He  found  pres- 
ently, too,  that  he  could  make  a  friend  of  an  enemy  if  he 
chose,  and  could,  before  the  term  was  over,  have  captured 
the  good-looking  bullying  boy.    But  here  he  did  not  choose. 


i8o  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

And  then,  quite  suddenly,  he  made  further  discovery. 

He  did  not  mean  to  be  unhappy.  Vaguely  he  knew  that 
he  had  something  to  contend  with  —  something  that  he 
himself  had  nothing  to  do  with,  but  that  had  everything 
in  the  world  to  do  with  him.  If  once  he  gave  in  to  it,  it 
would  overcome  him,  but  he  was  not  going  to  give  in  to  it. 
Whatever  it  was,  he  was  going  to  live  it  down  —  more,  he 
was  going  to  turn  it  to  account  as  the  oyster  turns  grits 
to  account,  making  pearls  of  them  .  .  .  turning  them  to 
enduring  beauty. 

And  his  discovery  —  his  real  discovery  of  which  every 
other  discovery  was  only  a  part?  Outwardly  it  was  a  toy. 
Inwardly  it  was  everything  —  literature,  music  (somehow), 
painting,  sculpture  (somehow),  the  joys  and  the  joy  of 
life.  Anything  that  it  was  not,  it  stood  for.  It  was  the 
opening  of  all  the  doors. 

A  boy  called  Smith  initiated  him  —  a  rather  stupid  boy 
with  a  cold  in  the  head  and  a  cow's-lick,  who  did  not  in 
the  smallest  degree  himself  understand.  But  he  knew 
about  the  things,  and  of  a  shop,  out  of  bounds  for  boarders, 
but  accessible  to  day-boys  like  himself,  where  they  could 
be  bought. 

"But  what  are  they  like?"  David  asked. 

"Like  real  theatres,  only  very  small." 

David  tried  to  imagine. 

"How  small?" 

"Oh,  not  so  very." 

"But  how  big?" 

"About  as  big  as  —  Oh,  I  don't  know." 

"They've  scenes?"  said  David. 

"Rather.   And  side-wings." 

"Side-wings."  David  thrilled  at  a  new  word.  "You 
might  tell  me." 

"I  am  telling  you.  You  can  get  plays  —  lots.  I  don't 
think  much  of  them.   They're  only  for  kids." 

"But  your  pater  had  one." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  i8i 

"They're  quite  old  things  really,  he  says.  You've 
heard  of  Mrs.  Siddons.  She's  in  some  of  the  plays  — 
they  were  made  when  she  was  alive." 

"But  do,"  said  David,  "tell  me  what  they're  like." 

He  was  aflame  to  know  now.  Heaven  knows  what  he 
saw,  but  he  saw  as  clearly  as  Blake. 

"Scenes,"  he  said,  "and  what  did  you  say?  Yes,  side- 
wings." 

"There  are  foot-pieces,  too,  and  top-drops." 

David  caught  his  breath. 

Smith  proceeded.  No  one  had  ever  been  so  much  in- 
terested in  anything  he  said,  or  might  have  to  say,  be- 
fore. 

"My  father  says  he  spent  all  his  pocket  money  on  them 
when  he  was  a  boy.  The  characters  are  on  sheets,  you 
know,  —  plates  they  call  them.  Some  of  the  scenes  are 
meant  to  be  cut  out,  you  know,  so  that  you  can  see  through 
them." 

David  thought  of  the  pantomime.  He  believed  he  knew. 

"Like  the  transformation  scene." 

"There  are  transformation  scenes." 

"Pantomimes?" 

It  seemed  there  were  pantomimes. 

After  that  David  could  not  rest  till  he  should  see  what 
Smith  had  described,  or,  more  exactly,  had  not  described. 
Smith  was  disappointing.  He  was  only  interesting  be- 
cause he  knew  of  the  things,  and  he  was  not  interesting 
because  he  was  not  interested. 

"They're  only  for  kids,"  he  repeated  from  time  to  time. 
He  had  rather  a  contempt  for  them.  But  David  was  sure. 
He  ceased  to  talk  to  Smith  about  them,  and  could  not 
bring  himself  to  ask  the  snufifling  boy  to  go  to  the  shop  for 
him.  The  November  evening  when,  breaking  bounds,  he 
went  himself,  marked  a  turning-point  in  his  life.  Every- 
thing led  to  it  —  the  shadow  over  his  life,  of  the  existence 
of  which  school  had  now  caused  him  to  become  dimly 
conscious ;  the  early  wanderings ;  Katinka  certainly  and  the 


i82  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

actings,  with  the  brothers  Grimm  behind  those,  and 
the  wonders  of  the  unfamiHar  Bible  to  follow  them;  and 
many,  many  other  mysteries  besides  these.  All  the  external 
things,  yes,  but  something  deeper;  something,  in  truth,  in 
David  himself.   He  entered  the  shop  with  a  beating  heart. 


CHAPTER  V 

The  shop  was  very  dark.  It  was  in  a  back  street.  A  single 
candle  lighted  the  window,  and  a  smoky  oil  lamp  stood 
on  the  counter. 

David  stood  looking  into  the  window  for  some  moments 
before  he  went  in.  Cheap  writing-materials  were  what  it 
held  chiefly  —  paper,  pens  of  various  rather  unattractive 
sorts,  inks  of  two  or  three  colours,  hard  pink  blotting- 
paper  which  did  not  look  absorbent.  There  were  other 
things;  bottles  of  gum,  rulers,  a  dusty  writing-desk  or  two, 
and  many  things  on  cards  —  cards  with  gaps  on  them 
where  this  or  that  had  been  sold. 

The  light  of  the  candle  was  very  dim,  but  not  dim 
enough  to  have  obscured  what  he  sought,  if  it  had  been 
there.   It  was  not  there.   He  went  in. 

A  bell  tinkled  as  he  opened  the  door,  and  continued  to 
tinkle  long  after  it  had  closed  itself  and  he  stood  shyly  be- 
hind it.  No  one  came  for  a  minute  or  so,  and  he  had  time 
to  look  about  him.  The  stock  was  meagre  and  had  an  air 
of  being  dusty.  There  was  a  window  at  the  back  of  the  shop 
with  a  red  rep  curtain  on  the  farther  side  of  it,  but  this 
was  drawn  so  that  he  could  not  see  into  the  room  beyond 
it.  There  was  a  rep  curtain  also  over  the  glazed  half  of  the 
door  beside  the  windovv.   No  sign  of  life. 

He  was  startled  when  the  bell  tinkled  suddenly  behind 
him,  and  an  old  man  entered  from  the  street. 

The  old  man  eyed  him,  and  said,  "What  is  it?"  curtly, 
as  if  a  customer  was  not  at  all  what  he  wanted  to  see,  and 
then,  making  odd  little  protesting  noises,  went  round  be- 
hind the  counter,  where,  with  his  back  for  a  moment  to 
David,  he  put  something  away  on  a  shelf  out  of  sight.  He 
turned,  then,  to  the  waiting  David  with  another  "What  is 
it?"  but,  before  David  could  answer  him,  he  volunteered 


i84  DAVID   PENSTEPHEN 

that  David  was  one  of  the  College  Boys  and  that  he  did  n't 
sell  fireworks, 

"  I  don't  want  fireworks,"  said  David. 

"Nor  sweets,"  said  the  old  man, 

"I  don't  want  sweets,"  said  David.  "I  want  —  do  you 
sell  —  I  mean,  have  you  got  —  I  don't  exactly  know  what 
you  call  them — " 

"Nobody  comes  for  an  hour-and-a-half,"  said  the  old 
man  —  "upwards  of  that  —  and  then  when  I  only  so 
much  as  step  over  to  the  chemist's  for  a  spot  of  pepper- 
mint for  my  indigestion,  and  have  n't  been  gone  not  half 
a  minute,  the  blessed  bell  goes  for  somebody  as,  to  the  best 
of  my  belief,  doesn't  know  what  he  does  want!  If  it 
is  n't  fireworks,  young  gentleman,  what  is  it?  Python's 
Eggs  I  do  keep.  Everybody  pleased.  Roars  of  Innocent 
Amusement  and  No  Danger.  Just  a  match  to  the  Egg 
(don't  tell  me  y'  don't  want  something  with  scrope  for 
playing  with  matches!)  and  the  Serpent  uncoiling  to  a 
length  of  Upwards  of  Two  Feet,  vide  printed  Directions, 
though  I  would  n't  go  measuring.  They're  a  penny  if  I  've 
got  any  left.  If  it's  tobacco  I  don't  keep  it,  nor  would  n't 
feel  myself  justified  in  selling  it  to  you  if  I  did." 

He  was  meant  to  laugh  then?  He  laughed  and  began 
to  explain,  but  he  hadn't  got  further  than  "Plays,  you 
know  —  scenes,  characters,"  when  a  hand  was  thrust 
across  the  counter  to  him  and  his  own  gripped  tremu- 
lously. 

"At  last!"  the  old  man  was  saying,  and  David  felt  as 
one  who  has  been  found  after  long  search  and  is  'ac- 
claimed'! "Somebody  asks  for  the  Juvenile  Drama  — 
somebody  comes  in  and  ackshally  asks.  You'll  excuse  me, 
young  gentleman.  Ackshally  asks!  You'll  pardon  an  old 
man  making  so  bold.  The  Juvenile  Drama!  Skelt's,  Red- 
ington's,  Webb's,  Park's  —  Skelt's!  there's  a  name  for 
you!  there's  a  sound!  It  has  been  music  to  many  in  its 
time.  But  now.  Where's  boys  with  the  —  the  Soul  for  it? 
Yes,  the  Soul,    And  it's  a  boy's  toy  (though  mind  y'  / 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  185 

don't  really  call  it  a  toy)  —  but  a  boy's,  mark  me,  what- 
ever it  is,  for  I  never  yet  met  a  female  who  rightly  under- 
stood, much  less  appreciated  it.  They  —  females  —  might 
play  with  it,  like  they  play  with  dolls.  It's  a  boy  has  the 
feeling.  I  know.  Why,  don't  I  remember?  I  used  to 
tremble.  Nothing  else  in  all  my  life  give  me  the  thrill.  It's 
a  kind  of  —  but  I  need  n't  tell  you.  You  know.  I  ought  to 
recognised  you  at  once.  I  ought  to  sensed  you  the  moment 
I  come  into  the  shop  —  the  moment  I  set  eyes  on  you." 

"But  I  don't  know,"  said  David,  rather  breathlessly, 
so  bewildered  was  he.  "I  want  to.  I've  only  heard  of 
them.   I 've  never  seen  one." 

"He's  never  seen  one,"  said  the  old  man  to  the  dusty 
stock  and  the  ceiling.  "He's  never  seen  one.  But  he  will 
know.  And  let  me  tell  you  I  envy  you.  Yes,  with  the  accu- 
mulated wisdom  and  experience  of  a  lifetime  I  envy  you. 
You  wait.  You'll  know  right  enough,  and,  unless  I'm 
very  much  mistaken  (which  I  never  am,  I  may  say),  be- 
fore you're  many  minutes  older.  But — "  he  broke  off — ■ 
"where  did  you  hear  of  them,  and  what  brought  you  to 
me?" 

"A  boy  told  me  of  them.  He  said  you  kept  them.  He 
did  n't  care  for  them." 

"What  did  I  tell  you!  That's  why  I've  took  'em  out  of 
the  window.  What's  the  good?  Nobody  worthy  of  'em, 
that's  what  I  said  to  myself.  Let's  put  'em  away.  A 
dying  industry.  In  another  ten  or  fifteen  years  there's  no 
one '11  have  heard  of  them.  There'll  be  imitations,  mind, 
in  toyshops  —  all  they're  fit  for  —  German  conglomera- 
tions—  with  Op'ra  wrote  over  them.  .  .  .  Op'ra!  .  .  .  and 
no  more  like  them  than  a  Baptist  Chapel  is  like  St,  Paul's 
Cathedral.    But  the  real  thing — " 

"Oh,  could  n't  I  see  them?"  said  David.  He  was  burn- 
ing with  excitement  now.  Though  he  did  not  understand 
half  the  old  man  had  said  to  him,  he  knew  that  what  he 
was  to  be  shown  would  be  to  him  all  that  the  old  man 
predicted  —  that  in  this  sense  he  was,  from  the  old  man's 


i86  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

point  of  view,  at  least  not  one  of  the  wholly  unworthy. 
The  old  man  put  on  a  pair  of  spectacles,  looked  at  him, 
nodded  his  head  two  or  three  times  smiling,  and  turned 
to  a  drawer  behind  him.  He  pulled  it  out  and  proceeded 
to  take  from  it  what  seemed  to  the  feverish  David  to  be 
an  infinity  of  baulking,  tiresome,  exasperating  things  — 
sheets  of  cardboard,  foolscap  and  drawing-paper,  packets 
of  dish-papers,  curling-papers,  and  what-indeed-not?  — 
before  a  largish  brown  paper  parcel  was  brought  to  view. 
This  the  old  man  lifted  to  the  counter.  He  pulled  the 
string  which  bound  it,  and  David  felt  his  heart  give  a  leap. 

Well,  he  was  n't  disappointed.  The  old  man,  fingering 
this  and  that  lovingly,  and  watching  him,  was  n't  dis- 
appointed either. 

'"Stage-Front,"'  David  read,  '"Redington's."'  And 
something  about  Building  higher  than  any  other  pub- 
lished at  a  larger  price.  "What  does  Building  mean?  And 
look  here.   It  says  Flat  or  Built.  What  is  Built?" 

The  old  man  explained  how  that,  when  the  stage-front 
was  mounted  on  cardboard,  certain  cuttings  and  bendings 
would  sink  the  opening  and  bring  the  boxes  into  position. 

"  Bevel  it  and  make  it  solid-like,  see?  As  if  It  really  was 
built.  You  can  buy  'em  all  ready  done,  stage  and  all.  But 
you  take  my  advice.  I'll  draw  you  out  a  little  plan,  and 
when  you  go  home  for  the  holidays  you  get  a  carpenter  to 
make  your  own  stage  for  you.  You  can  have  it  deeper 
then.  More  scrope  for  effects.  More  practicable.  You 
won't  be  able  to  do  much  at  school,  I  don't  expect.  Past- 
ing your  scenes  and  characters  on  brown  paper,  and  cut- 
ting out  and  such.  You'll  be  impatient,  I  've  no  manner  of 
doubt,  to  begin  —  to  set  to  work-like,  but  if  you'll  believe 
me,  the  spirit  of  the  thing,  the  real  meaning  is  n't  in  all 
that  at  all.  It's  the  things  themselves.  The  names. 
Pizarro.  There's  a  name  for  you.  Rolla  —  look  at  him 
with  the  child  when  he  has  to  cross  the  waterfall.  I  forget 
whose  great  part  that  was,  but  some  one's.    There's  one 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  187 

scene  called  The  Temple  of  the  Sun.  And  there's  Dun- 
geons. My  goodness,  the  Dungeons!  Chains,  rings  in  the 
walls,  barred  windows." 

It  was  certain  that  the  old  man  knew. 

David,  round-eyed,  looked  and  listened.  He  could  have 
stayed  for  ever,  but  found  suddenly  to  his  dismay  that  it 
was  now  a  quarter  to  five.  The  school  gates  were  locked  in 
the  winter  at  five.  He  decided  hurriedly  on  Pizarro  (uncol- 
oured),  and,  with  this  and  a  Stage-Front  (coloured)  pressed 
closely  to  him  under  his  coat,  and  with  promises,  as  much 
to  himself  as  to  the  old  man,  to  come  again  very  soon,  he 
took  his  hurried  and  excited  flight. 

Thus,  in  the  little  dark  shop  in  the  back  street,  upon  this 
November  evening,  was  found  that  which  was  to  have  its 
influence  on  far  more  than  the  short  years  which  passed 
before,  in  the  natural  course,  the  thing  itself  —  the  out- 
ward and  visible  sign  of  all  that  it  represented  —  was  out- 
grown. What  matter  the  form  which  the  symbol  may  take? 
For  one  it  is  ships.  Oh,  the  flat  bit  of  wood  with  the  mast 
and  the  sail  of  skewered  paper  —  nay,  earlier  than  this 
even,  the  paper  boat  itself  which  your  grandmother,  per- 
haps, knew  how  to  make  for  you !  From  those  a  short  cut 
maybe  to  the  great  ships  which  really  go  down  to  the  sea. 
For  another,  engines.  For  a  third,  books.  For  David,  all 
these  probably,  but  now  the  thing  which  to  his  present 
young  imagination  (the  appeal  was  to  that!)  embraced 
everything  else.  He  hung  over  the  sheets.  Pizarro,  Rolla, 
the  Lady  Elvira  seated  (an  Empire  couch  if  his  memory 
serves  him).  Old  Blind  Man  and  Boy  (the  blindness  rep- 
resented by  bandaged  eyes),  these  and  many  others  with 
their  First  Dress  and  Second  Dress,  and  (but,  for  this, 
seek  the  Book,  if  haply  in  these  degenerate  days  it  may 
still  be  found)  their  Plate  So-and-So,  Figure  So-and-So. 
Plate!  Figure!  The  sound,  as  the  old  man  had  said,  of 
words!  Yes,  and  the  type  itself  —  several  founts  —  the 
shape  and  the  size  of  the  letters  in  which  the  words  with 
the  inspiring  sounds  were  printed !  Difficult  in  after  years 


i88  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

to  apportion  the  various  plays  which  passed  through  his 
hands  to  their  several  pubhshers.  Was  Pizarro  Skelt? 
And  here  again  magic!  For  the  allurement  of  names  and 
of  the  sound  of  words  extended  itself  to  the  very  addresses 
of  these  publishers.  Skelt  of  Swan  Street,  Minories.  What 
and  where  was  —  or  were  —  Minories?  Where,  where, 
where?  Webb  sanctified  Old  Street,  St.  Luke's.  Oh,  the 
sound  of  St.  Luke's  in  connection  with  Old  Street!  And 
Redington,  of  the  fourpenny  stage-front  which  built  higher 
than  any  other  published  at  sixpence,  from  his  number  in 
Hoxton  Street,  formerly,  as  a  footnote  to  the  plates  took 
enthralling  pains  to  explain,  called  Hoxton  Old  Town, 
turned  Hoxton  presently  into  the  Mecca  of  David's  wild- 
est dreams.  For  all  the  length  of  the  period  over  which  the 
spell  of  the  Juvenile  Drama  cast  itself,  his  keenest  desire 
was  to  see  the  enchanted  spot  whence  came  —  where  were 
born  —  the  wonderful  plates,  the  characters,  scenes,  side- 
wings,  top-drops,  and  foot-pieces,  which  reached  him  in 
term-time  by  way  of  the  little  shop  in  the  back  street,  and 
in  the  holidays  by  post.  A  name  and  a  number  dominated 
a  considerable  portion  of  an  impressionable  boyhood. 

His  dream  while  it  was  yet  a  dream  was  never  realised. 
London,  as  we  may  suppose,  gave  him  many  delights;  real 
theatres  at  Christmas-time,  pantomimes  anyway;  the 
Aquarium  (which  had  held  a  whale,  though  he  does  not 
remember  to  have  seen  that,  and  Zazel,  whom  he  did  see 
walking  her  wire  blindfold,  diving  from  the  roof,  and  even 
fired  from  her  cannon);  the  Crystal  Palace,  of  course; 
Madame  Tussaud's,  heard  of  from  afar  even  in  the  days 
of  the  wandering;  the  Zoological  Gardens;  the  Baker 
Street  Bazaar;  but  never  Hoxton  —  or  the  Minories,  or 
even  Old  Street,  St.  Luke's.  Hoxton  was  out  of  every  one's 
beat.  Nobody,  in  Cheyne  W^alk,  anyway,  knew  quite 
where  it  was,  or  how  to  get  to  it.  You  could  n't  take  it  on 
your  walks,  at  all  events.  So,  though  never  relinquishing 
hope,  he  employed  the  post  and  waited  upon  it.  How  he 
waited  upon  it  .  .  .  with  what  excitement  hailed  a  double 


DAVID   PENSTEPHEN  189 

knock  in  the  distance,  listened  for  a  step,  watched  a  figure 
by  day,  a  jerking  lamp  by  night!  He  could  recall  the  face 
of  a  particular  postman  now  for  no  other  reason  than  that 
he  brought,  or  did  not  bring,  the  parcel  for  which  on  some 
occasion  or  other  he  clamoured.  He  was  not  patient,  or 
perhaps  he  learnt  his  first  lessons  in  patience  then.  Boys 
had  less  pocket  money  in  those  days  —  the  sons  of  the 
well-to-do  with  the  rest  —  and  additions  to  his  repertory 
meant  savings-up,  small  self-denials  in  other  things.  Yet, 
so  deeply  are  the  waitings  impressed  on  his  mind,  that,  for 
some  time,  each  one  of  the  holidays  as  it  came  must  have 
seen  the  belated  arrival  of  at  least  one  play. 

Names,  names,  names.  It  was  Grimm  over  again  and 
the  magic  of  the  golden  things  and  the  numbered  things. 
The  Miller  and  his  Men;  The  Blue  Jackets  (with  Admiral 
Trunnion,  Ben  Binnacle — names  surely  to  set  young  blood 
coursing!  —  Fanny  Trunnion,  'alias  Lieutenant  Firefly  of 
the  Skyrocket  Fireship,'  and  an  engaging  Betsy  Bodkin); 
The  Silver  Palace  (Volcano,  Lumina,  Corla  Crown) ;  Paul 
Clifford;  The  Waterman;  and — but  here  his  mother,  startled, 
searched  in  her  memory  for  an  allusion  by  that  time  no 
longer  quite  recent,  and  shewed  an  interest  great  almost 
as  his  own  —  the  redoubtable  Baron  Munchausen. 

Food  for  the  young  imagination,  that  is  all,  but  would 
one  thing  have  done  as  well  as  another  —  the  ship,  the 
engine?  Not  for  David.  Not  for  David,  for  whom  his 
mother  came  to  see,  if  she  did  not  indeed  see  at  once,  that 
it  had  to  be  what  it  was.  The  very  list  stood  for  something 
—  the  list,  that  is,  of  the  Hoxton  Firm,  for  that  was  some- 
how the  only  one  which  ever  came  into  his  hands.  Skelt 
and  Webb  and  Park  had  been  swallowed  up  already,  per- 
haps? But  he  might  read  the  names  of  twenty-three  plays 
even  there.  These,  the  Hoxton  Street  list  announced  to 
have  been  Republished  —  an  announcement  which,  as  im- 
plying some  earlier  era,  interested  him  keenly.  The  Corsi- 
can  Brothers  was  amongst  them,  The  Brigand,  Douglas, 
Timour  the  Tartar. 


I90  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

And  then,  the  twenty-three  being  finished,  there  fol- 
lowed a  catalogue  of  names  more  thrilling,  more  enthrall- 
ing still  —  if  only  by  reason  of  three  lines,  which,  prefacing 
it,  put  all  that  it  held  out  of  the  reckoning. 

"Having  the  Copper-Plates  likewise  of  the  following 
Plays,"  said  Hoxton,  "I  shall  Republish  them  also  in  due 
time,  when  they  will  always  be  kept  in  print,  both  plain 
and  coloured,  with  Books  complete," 

And  then  the  names  —  names  to  make  his  mouth 
water:  The  Flying  Dutchman;  Belphegor;  Rob  Roy;  The 
Red  Rover  (oh,  the  Red  Rover!);  Wapping  Old  Stairs; 
Wreck  Ashore;  Dred;  and  Sixteen-String  Jack!  These  were 
but  a  few  of  them. 

Due  time  was  not  David's  time.  He  might  sigh  for  the 
moon.  Jack  Sheppard  had  sixty-four  sheets!  To  have  been 
able  to  possess  them!  To  have  been  able  only  to  see  them! 
And  Red  Rover,  Red  Rover  which  ran  like  the  refrain  of 
a  song  in  his  head,  and  Dred  (covering  what?),  and  the 
beloved  mysterious  Sixteen-String  Jack! 

Not,  it  will  be  seen,  just  the  thing  itself.  For  the  old 
man  knew  —  knew  David,  anyway.  He  might  have  proph- 
esied. Knowing  so  much  he  must  know  more,  surely. 
There  were  Fire  Pans  at  a  penny,  for  your  Red  Fire; 
slides ;  footlights  in  shiniest  tin  at  a  penny  a  burner,  and  up 
to  twelve  burners.  By  the  smell  of  the  colza  oil  with 
which  they  were  trimmed,  and  by  the  smell  of  the  smok- 
ing of  them  when  they  smoked,  and  by  the  other  linked 
and  hallowed  smells  of  the  theatre  in  little,  those  notably 
of  glue  and  paste,  and  (more  subtle  but  still  delectable)  of 
paints  with  such  names  as  Crimson  Lake,  Vermillion, 
Ultramarine,  Burnt  Umber,  Burnt  Sienna,  Gamboge  and 
Yellow  Ochre,  he,  knowing  these  in  common  with  David, 
might  surely  have  prophesied. 

What  to  say?  That  the  little  theatre  would  one  day  be 
changed  for,  nay,  become,  the  big  one?  That  David  would 
be  an  actor?  Or  that  he  would  follow  beauty,  search  for  it, 
find  it? 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  191 

He  did  say  one  day  in  the  dark  little  shop  that  David 
would  never  look  back. 

"How  look  back?"  asked  David. 

"Oh,  I  dunno.  What  comes  will  come  out  of  this  — 
whether  it's  acting  in  earnest,  which  it  has  been  with  some, 
or  music,  the  piano  or  the  voice  or  maybe  the  violin ;  or 
whether  it's  painting  or  sculpsher,  or  poetry.  I  could  tell 
you  what  it  won't  be;  but  what  it  will,  that's  a  different 
matter.  In  old  age,  pictures,  I  dare  say,  and  china  and  an 
eye  for  the  genuine  thing.  A  collector,  that's  what  it's 
come  to  with  some.  Prints  especially,  mezzotints  or  line- 
engravings  —  the  eye  trained  perhaps  by  observing  the 
differences  in  these.  Ah,  you've  noticed  that,  have  you! 
I  thought  so.  Seen  the  difference  between  the  drawings  of 
Don  Quixote,  eh,  and  your  favourite  Silver  Palace  ?" 

David  had.  And  the  difference,  too,  between  the  easy 
lines  of  the  graceful  Bluejackets  and  the  wooden  clumsi- 
ness of  the  figures  in  the  Mistletoe  Bough.  Not  that  he 
would  have  allowed  himself  really  to  call  even  the  stumpy 
Lady  Agnes  wooden  or  clumsy.  Good  and  bad,  all  shared 
the  glamour.  He  perceived  for  all  that;  knew  the  quick 
from  the  dead;  and  how  different  a  hand  had  drawn  the 
characters  in  Douglas,  Lady  Randolph  with  the  air  which 
he  came  to  think  of  later  as  'Siddons,'  Randolph,  Glen- 
alvon,  the  Stranger,  and  notably  the  Servant  —  blood, 
bone,  muscle  to  each  of  them  —  from  the  hand  which 
(though  he  loved  The  Waterman)  could  have  perpetrated 
such  a  Wilhelmina,  such  a  Robin,  so  monkey-faced  a  Tom 
Tug.  He  would  have  been  Smith  who  did  n't  understand, 
not  David  at  all,  if  he  had  n't  been  conscious  of  differences. 
But  it  is  certain  that  the  contemplation  of  the  different 
hands,  expressing  themselves  so  differently  in  the  different 
drawings,  must  already  have  begun  to  train  his  eye. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Unlikely,  one  would  have  thought  that  the  uncomfort- 
able little  incident  which  had  marked  the  beginning  of 
David's  school-days  should  have  come  to  his  mother's 
knowledge.  David  unquestioned  could  never  have  spoken 
of  it.  It  was  through  a  question  —  through  the  very  acci- 
dent of  the  words  in  which  he  clothed  it  —  that  slumbering 
memories  were  stirred.   The  sequel  was  almost  automatic. 

Time  was  passing.  The  term-times  and  holidays  came 
and  went.  David  was  twelve,  was  thirteen,  and  still  the 
little  theatre,  which  was  the  symbol  of  so  much  else,  held 
him.  She  had  looked  to  see  it  outgrown  long  since,  but 
though  it  would  be  outgrown  when  it  had  served  its  pur- 
pose, that  hour  had  not  struck  yet.  Whither  tending? 
Whereto  all  the  thoughts  too  deep  for  words  which  it 
inspired  in  him?  What  was  it  doing  to  him  and  for  him? 
Watching  the  engrossed  boy  generally,  she  asked  herself 
these  things. 

One  day,  really  watching  him,  she  asked  him. 

"David." 

"Yes,  Mother." 

"What  are  you  going  to  be?" 

There  had  been  a  pasting  the  day  before  —  sheets  of 
characters  pasted  on  to  sheets  of  brown  paper,  most  of 
the  household  helping,  and  now  David  had  begun  to  cut 
out.  The  cutting-out  he  liked  to  do  unaided.  He  could 
trust  no  one  else,  his  mother  always  excepted,  with  the 
minutenesses  and  intricacies  of  the  delicate  work. 

"Does  one  have  to  be  something?"  he  asked,  and  knew 
at  once  to  a  momentary  dismay  —  or  a  dismay  that  was 
at  least  potential  —  that  he  had  reminded  himself  of 
something  which  he  wished  to  forget.  "Can't  one,"  he 
said  after  a  pause,  —  "can't  one  just  be  ?" 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  193 

"You  would  n't  wish  to  be  idle,"  his  mother  said. 

David  was  n't  so  sure. 

"Have  you  thought  at  all  what  you'd  like  to  be?"  she 
asked  then. 

David,  cutting  out  more  busily,  said,  "Oh,  I  don't 
know,"  and  held  the  tip  of  his  tongue  between  his  teeth 
as  his  scissors  effected  a  difficult  manoeuvre. 

"Suppose  I  'd  cut  off  his  sword,"  he  said,  the  uncomfort- 
able moment  past. 

It  was  actually  Baron  Munchausen  upon  whom  he  was 
working.  She  had  seen  the  plates,  as  we  know,  and  even 
the  horse  which  was  cut  in  two  by  the  fall  of  the  portcullis. 
Her  thoughts,  with  the  bisected  steed  for  a  mount,  or  per- 
haps David's  scissors  for  a  sort  of  broomstick,  fled  to 
Ettringham.  She  heard  again  Miss  Ingoldby's  snip,  snip, 
snip;  saw  Lady  Penstephen  and  her  slop-basin;  heard  the 
sound  of  John's  impetuous  thrustings. 

"But  you'll  have  to,  David.  Don't  the  masters  ever 
ask  you?" 

"No." 

"  But  you  ought  to  be  working  for  something.  What  do 
you  think  you'd  like  to  be?" 

"Can  I  be  what  I  like?" 

"  I  don't  say  that,  but  it  would  be  some  sort  of  guide  if 
we  knew  what  your  tastes  were." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  David  again;  but  he  thought, 
all  the  same,  that  he  did  know. 

Everything  was  leading  him  to  the  knowledge  then ;  not 
the  little  theatre  only;  though,  since  he  had  had  that  for  a 
symbol  of  the  desired  thing,  the  knowledge  lay  behind  all 
that  he  did.  There  were  times  when  he  could  hardly  con- 
tain himself  for  the  urgency  of  his  feelings.  Music  told  him 
—  if,  as  is  to  be  feared,  he  called  everything  that  had  a  tune 
music,  from  the  noises  made  by  the  dark-eyed  little  Pied- 
montese  with  the  unmastered  accordions  with  whom  Eng- 
land swarmed  just  then,  and  those  of  the  piano-organs, 
with  their  Santa  Lucia  s  and  their  Oh-my-Fie-For-Shame's, 


194  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

only  beginning  then  to  take  the  place  of  the  Voici-le- 
Sabre  s  and  the  Hearts-Bowed-Down  and  the  When-Other- 
Lips,  of  the  groaning  wooden-legged  hurdy-gurdies,  to  the 
strains  of  the  German  bands  which  murdered  Handel  and 
Offenbach  and  Mozart  and  Verdi  and  Lecocq  quite  impar- 
tially everywhere.  Music  told  him;  books  told  him;  things 
seen  and  things  half-seen  told  him.  He  knew  when  he 
heard  the  lessons  read  in  Chapel.  Did  n't  this  one  or  that 
of  the  monitors  understand  what  he  read,  that  the  recital 
of  things  which  made  David's  heart  leap  should  be  so 
savourless?  He  knew  on  Glee  Club  nights  when  his  soft 
treble  ('tremble'  might  really  sometimes  have  been  the 
word  here!)  took  its  part  in  Oh,  who  will  o'er  the  downs  so 
free?  and  See  our  oars  with  feathered  spray,  and  Row,  Broth- 
ers, Row,  and  —  the  Glee  Club,  like  many  another,  using 
the  Harrow  Glee  Book —  Katinka's  Wanderlied  and  Katin- 
ka's  Lorelei,  and  (but  shorn  of  its  exquisite  crumpled  paper 
accompaniment!)  Katinka's  Alill.  Goodness!  He  knew 
then.  There  could  be  only  one  outlet  for  the  feelings  with 
which  he  was  blessed  or  burdened. 

Not  David's  words  any  of  these,  you  will  understand. 
All  that  he  felt  was  still  inarticulate.  He  only  knew  that 
he  did  feel,  and  that  somehow,  ultimately,  what  he  felt, 
or  what  he  had  the  power  of  feeling,  would  have  to  be  ex- 
pressed. When  as  a  smaller  boy  he  had  seen  a  circus  and 
had  wanted  to  be  a  circus  rider  and  jump  through  a  hoop, 
or,  by  a  jigging  of  his  arms,  balance  himself  on  his  but- 
tocks in  a  slipping  position  on  the  extreme  slope  of  the 
cantering  horse's  near  hind-quarter,  or  to  be  a  trapeze  per- 
former and  fly  from  swinging  bar  to  swinging  bar  in  mid- 
air, while  the  audience  held  its  breath  and  even  the  band 
stopped,  it  was  the  same  compelling  need  that  had  been 
there.  The  little  theatre  appeased  it.  He  could  be  Pizarro, 
you  see,  or  Rolla,  or  Coral  Crown  with  the  golden-scale 
armour,  or  Volcano  whose  pictured  lines  were  so  beautiful 
even  in  defeat.  The  Let's  Pretend  of  the  nursery  days? 
Not  quite  that.  Or  else  that  so  thoroughly,  so  completely,  as 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  195 

to  endue  simulation  with  the  divine  properties  of  creation. 
The  gods  that  David  would  have  made  in  the  likeness  of 
men  would  all,  as  Galatea  for  Pygmalion,  have  come  to  life. 

But  to  his  mother's  question  he  could  only  say  that  he 
did  n't  know. 

"Soldier?" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"At  least  I  should  like  to  be  one.  But  I'm  not  one." 

"How,  David?" 

"  I  don't  know.   I  don't  believe  I  am." 

"The  Navy,  then?" 

Again  David  found  himself  reminded  of  the  incident  of 
his  first  term.  The  uncomfortable  moment  had  returned. 
It  was  also,  this  time,  not  a  moment. 

He  grew  red  quite  suddenly,  to  his  mother's  surprise, 
and  then,  to  something  more  than  her  surprise,  gradually 
rather  white.  She  made  a  little  rapid  movement,  a  leaning 
of  her  body  towards  him,  but  did  not  speak.  He  went  on 
cutting  out,  but,  conscious  probably  of  her  eyes  upon  him, 
no  longer  easily. 

What  had  she  said?  She  reviewed  the  few  brief  sen- 
tences spoken  in  the  last  few  minutes,  seeking  any  possible 
cause  in  them  for  what  she  was  observing,  and  could  find 
none.  Had  he  been  twitted  with  the  need  of  a  goal,  of  an 
aim  or  a  purpose?  —  told  that  he  was  n't  of  the  stuff  that 
soldiers  or  sailors  were  made  of?  She  did  not  think  so.  He 
was  n't  a  fighter,  but  he  was  stubborn  on  occasion  and  had 
plenty  of  courage.  He  could  hold  his  own,  she  believed,  if 
his  opponents  played  fairly.  But  opponents?  She  had  no 
reason  to  suppose  that,  in  the  sense  of  adversaries,  there 
were  any. 

He  looked  up,  irked,  maybe,  by  the  tension. 

"You're  quite  happy  at  school,  David,  are  n't  you?" 

"Yes,  Mother,  of  course." 

She  was  not  satisfied.  Her  eyes,  with  a  reminiscence  in 
them  of  the  look  they  used  so  often  to  wear,  were  question- 
ing him. 


196  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"Tell  me,  David." 

"Tell  you  what,  Mother?" 

"Why  you  —  why  you — "  No,  she  couldn't  put  it 
that  way.  "Tell  me,"  she  said  gently,  "what's  the  mat- 
ter." 

"Nothing's  the  matter,  Mother." 

And  so  obviously  something  was,  or  something  had 
been! 

She  would  have  liked  to  say,  "David,  you're  keeping 
something  back  from  me,"  but  shrank  before  the  possibil- 
ity of  endangering  their  confidence  in  each  other,  by  seem- 
ing to  press  for  what,  if  it  was  to  have  any  value  at  all, 
must  be  given. 

"Get  me  a  pair  of  scissors  and  I '11  cat  out  too,"  she  said 
instead.  "You'll  find  a  pair  in  my  workbasket.  It's  on  the 
chest  of  drawers  in  my  room." 

So  she  eased  the  stress.  But  what  could  it  have  been 
.  .  .  ?  The  Army  .  .  .  the  Navy  .  .  .  and  at  once  the 
changing  of  colour  followed  by  the  constraint,  which, 
though  it  shewed  itself  in  no  faltering  of  his  eyes  when  she 
met  them,  was  none  the  less  palpable  to  beings  at  least  as 
sensitive  to  atmospheres  and  influences  as  she  was  and  as 
she  knew  him  to  be.  And,  as  she  threw  her  mind  back  over 
the  trifling  events  of  the  last  few  minutes,  had  she  not  been 
vaguely  sensible  of  something  of  the  same  sort  a  few  min- 
utes earlier? 

He  left  the  room  and  she  heard  his  feet  on  the  polished 
stairs.  She  looked  at  the  sheets  of  characters  on  their 
brown  paper,  which  all  night  had  lain  pressing  under 
heavy  books  to  flatten  them  after  the  day  before's  pasting, 
and  at  the  little  shower  of  clippings,  brown  and  white,  on 
the  table  and  on  the  floor  under  where  David  had  been 
sitting,  as  if  from  these  things  she  might  discover  a  clue 
to  what  was  puzzling  and  disturbing  her. 

"Does  one  have  to  be  something?"  It  had  been  upon 
that.  His  funny  little  "Can't  one  just  be "  had  been  in  the 
nature  of  a  recover^'.   She  built  up  the  scene  once  more: 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  197 

David,  the  light  on  his  hair,  bending  a  Httle  over  his  scis- 
sors, and  in  his  face  the  absorbed  expression  that  it  always 
wore  when  he  was  doing  work  that  interested  him.  What 
.  .  .  ? 

Well,  she  would  not  ask.  When  he  came  back  he  found 
his  own  scissors  in  her  hands,  and  her  attention  fixed  upon 
the  figure  she  was  cutting  out. 

"I  wonder  whether  the  screen  at  Ettringham  is  fin- 
ished," she  said. 

"I  could  have  helped  with  it,  could  n't  I,  Mother?" 

She  went  into  his  room  that  night  to  tuck  him  up  as  she 
used  to  do  when  he  was  a  little  boy.  She  lingered  a  little, 
hoping  that  he  would  tell  her  then,  but  he  did  not. 

"Well,  good-night,  darling." 

"Good-night." 

He  called  her  back  as  she  was  closing  the  door,  but  it  was 
only  to  ask  her  to  sing  Annie  Laurie  and  Hunting  Tower,  two 
of  his  favourites  of  her  songs,  and  to  leave  the  drawing- 
room  door  open. 

And  he  could  not  have  told  you  why  he  could  not  tell 
her!  It  was  as  it  had  been  when  he  had  kept  silence  after 
he  had  seen  the  two  ladies  on  the  seat  at  Homburg,  on  the 
day  of  his  mother's  illness  when  he  had  taken  his  memorable 
walk  with  his  father.  His  mother  in  turn  kept  silence. 
Time  was  when  she  would  have  unburdened  her  heart  to 
David's  father,  but  she  could  not  do  this  so  freely  now,  and 
the  odd  little  incident  added  itself  to  the  sum  of  those 
things  which  she  kept  in  her  heart. 

The  explanation  came  to  her  months  later,  and  then 
once  more  by  a  changing  of  colour  upon  the  part  of  a  bigger 
David,  and  a  putting  of  two  and  two  together  upon  her 
own. 

They  had  met  a  school-fellow  of  David's,  and  David's 
mother  heard  her  son's  nickname  for  the  first  time. 


198  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"Sir  Thingamy  P.,"  she  said.  "Is  that  what  they  call 
you?" 

His  mother  was  '  not  thinking,'  as  we  say,  or  she  would 
not  have  asked  why  they  called  him  that. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  David;  "  I  suppose  because  of 
Father." 

He  was  furious  with  himself  as  he  felt  himself  growing 
red. 

Her  attention  was  arrested. 

"Your  father?" 

David  nodded.  "They  always  ask  a  new  boy  what  his 
father  is,  you  know.  Why,  I  do  now.  Everybody  always 
does." 

Even  then  she  might  not  have  got  her  clue  if  David, 
stumbling  a  little,  —  fumbling,  anyway,  for  words,  because 
he  was  conscious  that  he  was  giving  himself  away,  —  had 
not  explained  himself  a  little  further.  "What  he's  in,  you 
know." 

She  had  it  now.  How  simple  it  was.  The  Army  or  the 
Navy,  and  David's  father  not  in  either.  What  was  he, 
then?  She  could  construct  that  scene  as  easily  as  she  had 
reconstructed  the  other  —  as  easily,  indeed,  as  if  she  had 
witnessed  it.  David,  a  little  shy  new  boy,  and  the  inquisi- 
tors. They  knew,  then,  and  David,  who  had  said  nothing 
at  home,  had  been  through  the  fire! 

For  a  moment  she  felt  stunned. 

But  did  they?  She  looked  at  him  quickly.  He  was  up 
to  her  shoulder  now  —  growing,  she  thought,  every  day. 
Already  he  had  a  separate  existence  from  hers.  What  ex- 
periences were  his  in  that  other  life  which  was  hidden  from 
her?  Did  they  know?  And  did  he?  And  (miserable  inde- 
cision for  her,  here),  what  did  she  wish? 

"But  why  should  they  call  you  Sir  Thingamy?"  She 
heard  herself  asking  at  last  and  even  contriving  a  banter- 
ing tone.  "Your  father,  yes:  if  they  ever  had  occasion 
to  speak  of  him,  I  could  understand  —  impertinent  little 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  199 

wretches!  —  their  calling  him  Sir  Thingamy.  But  why 
you?" 

David  wanted  to  get  off  the  subject.  He  looked  about 
as  if  in  the  material  objects  around  him  he  might  find  aid, 
means  of  escape  from  it,  means  whereby  he  might  change 
it.  He  found  none,  though  it  was  in  Battersea  Park  they 
were  walking,  and  Battersea  Park  abounded  in  interests. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "I  don't  know."  The  phrase  held  him 
and  he  was  conscious  of  that  too  —  of  seeming  to  have 
nothing  else  for  an  answer  to  every  question.  "I  suppose 
because  —  oh,  I  don't  know." 

He  broke  off  and  looked  at  the  river.  His  mother  did  not 
speak.  She  did  not  look  at  him.  She  was  determined  that 
nothing  should  be  forced  from  him.  She  too  looked  at  the 
river.  They  both  stopped  and  leant  on  the  railing.  But 
because  she  did  not  speak  he  had  to. 

"  Because  —  I  suppose,  because  some  day  I  shall  be  .  .  ." 

His  mother  caught  her  breath  with  a  little  sound. 

"Myself,"  he  finished  with  a  little  gulp.  "They  meant 
after  years  and  years,  of  course,  when  I'm  quite  old." 

The  sword  turned  in  Mary's  heart.  They  did  n't  know, 
then,  or,  at  any  rate,  he  did  n't.  But  she  felt  suddenly 
that  she  wished  fervently  that  he  did.  She  breathed  quickly 
for  a  few  moments,  and,  to  steady  herself,  closed  her  hand 
upon  the  railing.  David,  suspecting  nothing,  did  not  ob- 
serve her.  The  discomfort  of  the  last  minute  or  two  —  a 
discomfort  which  he  would  yet  have  had  great  difficulty  to 
account  for  or  explain  —  had,  he  supposed,  been  all  his. 

"It  was  only  a  silly  joke,  you  see,"  he  said,  dismissing 
the  whole  thing;  and,  eased  of  it,  and  as  conscious  of  relief 
as  one  who  puts  down  a  load,  he  moved  away  a  few  paces 
and  looked  for  pebbles  to  throw  into  the  water. 

But  Mary  leaning  upon  the  railing  was  beset  by  a  very 
torture  of  perplexity.  This  was  perhaps  the  moment  for 
telling  him?   Now  while  he  would  imperfectly  understand 


200  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

and  so  imperfectly  realise.  Perhaps  never  again  would  so 
favourable,  nay,  so  easy,  an  opportunity  occur.  She  had 
only  to  call  him  to  her  now  and  to  say,  "David,  you  never 
will  be  Sir  Thingamy  P."  —  even  the  'Sir  Thingamy'  to 
her  hand  to  soften  the  blow  it  must  deal,  to  give  a  lulling 
appearance  of  comedy  to  the  tragedy,  and  so  ward  off  the 
pain  of  knowledge  till  the  mind  should  have  accustomed 
itself  to  the  idea!  —  "not  in  the  years  and  years,  not  even 
when  you  're  quite  quite  old."  For,  oh,  he  would  get  accus- 
tomed to  the  idea.  Sooner  or  later  he  must  be  told,  and 
with  all  her  heart  she  believed,  now,  that  the  telling  ought, 
on  every  count,  to  be  sooner  rather  than  later. 

"David." 

She  had  called  to  him.  She  had  heard  herself  call  to  him. 
She  was  going  to  tell  him,  then? 

"  You  did  n't  say  that?  You  did  n't  say  that,  yourself 
I  mean  —  about  some  day  becoming  —  succeeding  —  " 

"No,  Mother.   Of  course  not." 

His  face  had  clouded  again.  He  looked  at  the  pebbles 
he  was  holding  and  threw  one  of  them,  and  ran  to  the  rail- 
ing to  watch  for  the  ring  that  should  mark  its  fall.  It  was 
probably  forbidden  to  throw  stones  into  the  river,  she 
thought,  and,  part  of  her  mind  detaching  itself  as  it  were 
from  the  contemplation  of  the  problem  which  exercised 
her  so  mercilessly,  she  wondered,  with  that  part  of  it,  why 
a  park-keeper,  who  was  standing  some  forty  or  fifty  yards 
off  and  must  see  him,  did  not  interfere.  Then  she  knew 
that  she  wished  that  he  would  interfere.  And  then  she 
knew  that  she  was  wavering;  that  —  coward  that  her  love 
made  her !  —  she  wanted  to  gain  time ;  and  that  to  gain 
time  was  to  lose  it. 

And  then,  desperately,  her  whole  mind  attacked  the  prob- 
lem afresh.  Dare  she  spare  herself?  All  David's  life  was 
involved.  And  though  it  was  plain  that  he  himself  did  not 
know,  it  was  by  no  means  certain  that  those  who  had 
bestowed  his  nickname  upon  him  did  not  know.  There 
might  be  nothing  more  in  the  incident  than  he  of  his  igno- 


DAVID   PENSTEPHEN  201 

ranee  supposed,  or  there  might  be  a  malice  which  as  yet  had 
not  revealed  itself.  Was  there?  and  did  he  all  ignorantly 
somehow  suspect  it?  For,  clear  as  it  was  that  the  circum- 
stances that  had  attended  the  schoolboy  questionings  had 
taught  him  nothing,  it  was  at  least  equally  clear  that  he 
looked  back  upon  them,  for  some  reason  or  other,  with 
distaste,  and  that  he  could  only  bring  himself  to  allude  to 
them  with  a  very  real  reluctance. 

Then,  now,  surely!  Now  when  the  iron  was  hot;  or  the 
wax  was  soft;  or  the  twig  would  bend  without  breaking. 

And  then  —  and  all  in  the  few  moments  during  which, 
outwardly  calm,  she  stood  clutching  the  railing  —  a  thought 
of  John,  and,  and  in  the  light  of  other  thoughts  which  came 
in  its  train,  a  sudden  check!  Had  she,  without  consulting 
the  boy's  father,  the  right  to  tell  him?  Ought  she  upon  her 
own  responsibility  to  take  a  step  from  which  there  would 
be  no  returning?  The  thoughts  thronged  her  now,  each  as 
it  came  involving  another.  John  and  she  were  one.  No 
real  barrier  could  have  raised  itself  between  them.  She  saw 
him  as  she  had  seen  him  at  Homburg,  leaning  over  her, 
when  she  came  back  to  life  after  her  illness,  the  tears  of  his 
inexpressible  relief  and  thankfulness  in  his  eyes,  felt  his 
head  bowed  beside  her  on  the  bed,  his  hands  gathering  her 
hands  into  his  —  Christ's  simile,  the  simile  for  all  time  of 
protective  sheltering  love  —  as  a  hen  gathers  her  chickens 
under  her  wings,  and  knew  that  there  could  be  no  barrier 
between  them.  To  act  independently  of  him  would  be  to 
acknowledge,  nay,  to  establish,  the  existence  of  what  did 
not  exist,  and  she  had  been  on  the  point  of  doing  this.  She 
held  her  breath  for  a  moment  and  closed  her  eyes.  David, 
as  before,  found  himself  released. 

But  both  came  in  from  their  walk  a  little  older  than  when 
they  had  started  out  for  it  an  hour  or  so  earlier.  Both,  in 
their  different  ways,  had  the  feeling  of  having  passed 
through  something  which  left  them  not  quite  where  they 
had  been  before.    For  David,  mysteries  seemed  to  be  in 


202  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

the  air,  the  ground  not  quite  solid  as  heretofore  under  his 
feet;  for  Mary,  nothing  new,  it  was  true,  but  a  new  aspect 
for  old  misgivings  and  fears  and  perplexities.  The  sending 
of  David  to  school  seemed  now  to  have  been  like  sending 
him  into  the  world  alone  and  unequipped  to  fend  and  to 
fight  for  himself.  Well,  he  would  have  all  his  life  perhaps 
to  fight  for  himself.  Better  that  he  should  begin  from  the 
first.   But  fight  blindfold? 

David,  the  elasticity  of  youth  helping,  recovered  him- 
self quickly.  He  had,  moreover,  always,  refuges  into  which 
he  could  creep.  Betsy,  as  we  may  or  may  not  remember, 
had  instanced  sleep.  That  boy,  she  had  said,  would  al- 
ways be  able  to  sleep.  But  sleep  was  only  for  the  night. 
A  book  was  his  particular  entrenchment  at  this  moment. 
He  was  reading  Ainsworth's  Tower  of  London,  and  once 
more  we  may  envy  him.  His  mother,  recovering  herself 
less  quickly,  but  recovering  herself,  nevertheless,  for  the 
knowledge,  perhaps,  that,  whatever  happened,  she  of 
necessity  must  keep  going,  saw  him  curled  up  on  the 
leather  sofa  in  the  schoolroom,  the  book  on  the  arm  of  it, 
one  of  his  own  arms  half  round  the  volume,  the  other  sup- 
porting his  absorbed  head  as  he  bent  over  it,  and  knew  that 
all  was  well  with  him.  But  he  would  have  to  be  told.  Upon 
that  point  she  had  no  hesitations.  She  would  speak  to  his 
father  that  evening. 


CHAPTER  VII 

She  spoke  after  dinner,  as  she  had  spoken  before  when  it 
was  only  a  piano  that  she  wanted. 

John  was  reading  just  as  he  had  been  reading  then,  and 
she  knitting.  She  had  even  a  book  upon  her  knee.  And 
she  was  not  reading  or  attempting  to  read.  For  the  back- 
ground of  Frau  Finkel's  room,  with  the  grained  woods  and 
the  looking-glasses,  there  was  the  very  different  back- 
ground of  the  panelled  room  in  Cheyne  Walk,  with  its  long 
windows  and  its  pilasters,  and  its  beautiful  old  hob  fire- 
places with  the  reed  backs. 

A  few  words  —  nine,  was  it?  —  had  settled  the  matter 
of  the  piano.  She  did  not  think  that  a  few  words  would 
settle  this.  She  searched  in  her  mind  how  best  to  begin, 
and  while  she  was  deliberating  he  looked  up.  Something 
in  her  expression  arrested  his  attention. 

"What  is  it,  Mary?" 

"  I  want  to  talk  to  you,  John." 

"Something  worrying  you?" 

She  nodded.  She  rolled  up  her  knitting,  and,  putting  it 
into  her  book,  pushed  both  away  from  her. 

"It's  about  David." 

"What's  he  been  doing?"  he  asked. 

He  put  down  his  book,  but  did  not  close  it. 

"It's  not  anything  that  he's  been  doing,"  Mary  said. 
"It's  what  we've  done,  or  rather  what  we  haven't  done. 
John,"  she  leaned  forward  a  little,  "what  is  your  plan 
about  David?" 

"In  what  way?" 

He  too  leaned  forward  a  little. 

"  I  learnt  something  to-day  which  brought  things  home 
to  me.  I  've  been  wanting  to  speak  to  you  about  him  for  a 
long  time.  Somehow  I  have  n't  been  able." 


204  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"What  is  it  you  learnt,  Mary?" 

"Oh,  a  very  small  thing  in  itself.  There  may  be  nothing 
in  it.  But  there  may  be  everything.  Only  his  nickname 
at  school." 

And  at  the  sound  of  its  ridiculous  syllables  as  she  pro- 
nounced them  to  his  father,  it  did  seem  to  her  for  a  mo- 
ment that  there  could  be  no  cause  for  misgiving  in  what 
was  so  frankly  absurd. 

John  laughed  as  he  heard  it,  and  she  even  laughed  a 
little  too. 

"Sir  Thingamy  P.,"  he  said.  "So  that's  what  they  call 
him." 

But  any  comic  aspect  the  name  might  have,  vanished 
with  his  next  words.  "  I  suppose  they  do  know,"  he  said 
gravely.    "  It  would  be  surprising  if  they  did  n't." 

He  saw,  then,  as  she  did. 

"Yet,"  she  said,  "they  certainly  have  n't  told  him  that 
they  do,  for  it  is  evident  that  he  does  n't.  And  that's  the 
point.  They're  bound  to  know,  probably  many  of  them 
do  already,  and  so  it's  bound  to  come  to  his  ears,  and  if  it 
comes  that  way  —  John,  it  mustn't  come  that  way!  — 
baldly,  brutally,  perhaps.    It's  unthinkable!" 

There  was  silence  when  she  had  spoken.  The  house  itself 
seemed  quite  still.  Then  faint  sounds,  teUing  of  life  in  the 
more  distant  parts  of  it,  reached  her ;  the  muffled  clatter- 
ing of  plates  and  dishes  from  below,  and  perhaps  an  almost 
indistinguishable  jingle  of  silver  or  of  glass;  the  poking  of 
the  kitchen  fire  and  the  hooking-up  or  the  replacing  of 
rings  in  the  kitchen  grate;  the  opening  of  a  door  and  a  rapid 
series  of  little  calls  to  the  cat  of  the  moment,  and  then  the 
shutting  and  the  locking  of  the  door  and  the  shooting  of 
bolts;  and,  from  upstairs,  the  footfall  of  a  soft-shod  Ma- 
tilda doing  the  rooms,  and  a  still  fainter  sound  which  was 
the  whirr  of  Betsy's  sewing-machine.  These  things,  like 
the  faint  noises  in  Frau  Finkel's  house  on  the  night  when 
we  heard  them  but  she  in  her  trance  did  not,  only  made 
the  stillness  seem  more  complete. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  205 

"We  must  remember,"  John  said,  breaking  the  silence 
at  last,  "that  so  far  David's  ignorance  has  protected  him. 
It  did  certainly  when  they  were  questioning  him  —  when 
they  were  asking  him  what  I  was.  If  he  had  known  then, 
it  would  have  been  much  more  difficult  for  him." 

"Ah,  yes,  then,  maybe,  but  it  would  n't  protect  him 
again.  That  it  did  was  an  accident.  Now  he  would  be  at 
their  mercy.  But  what  had  you  thought  of  doing,  John? 
You  have  had  some  plan.  You're  wiser  than  I  am.  When 
had  you  thought  it  would  be  best  to  tell  him?" 

The  words  might  have  sounded  impatient  in  any  other 
tone  than  that  in  which  she  spoke  them.  On  her  own  ac- 
count she  would  have  been  no  more  capable  of  impatience 
with  David's  father  than  of  sarcasm.  No  doubt  of  his 
wisdom  would  ever  have  entered  her  mind. 

"Do  you  want  him  told?" 

"  I  think  he  ought  to  be  told  at  once.  I  nearly  told  him 
this  afternoon.  I  would  have,  I  think,  if  I  could  have  had 
your  consent.  Would  you  have  given  it?" 

David's  father  closed  his  book  and  began  to  pace  the 
room.  Mary  watched  him  as  he  walked  the  length  of  it 
and  then  walked  back,  halting  to  take  up  and  to  put  down 
things  that  she  did  not  think  he  even  saw.  A  black  horn 
paper-knife  inlaid  with  ivory  —  a  hind  and  fawn  feeding  — 
was  one  of  such  objects.  She  feared  that  he  would  break 
it,  but  he  put  it  down  unharmed. 

"He  hated  talking  about  it?  What  made  you  think 
that?" 

"Oh,  it  was  easy  enough  to  see  that.  That  was  why  I 
thought  at  first  that  he  must  know;  but  he  does  n't." 

"You're  quite  certain  he  does  n't?" 

"Quite  certain." 

"Boys  are  odd  creatures,  remember,  —  shy  with  their 
parents  to  a  degree  that's  unbelievable." 

"David  is  n't  shy  with  me,  and,  no  John,  he  truly  does 
n't  know.  I  wish  now  that  I  had  told  him  to-day.  I  should 
be  sitting  here  with  an  easier  mind." 


2o6  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

He  had  not  answered  her  question.  There  was  an  earlier 
question  which  he  had  not  answered  either,  and  this  one, 
conscious,  now,  that  she  was  pressing  him,  but  urged  by 
the  stress  of  her  anxieties,  she  asked  him  again. 

"What  had  you  meant  to  do,  John?" 

He  stopped  in  his  pacing  and  drew  a  chair  up  to  hers. 

"  Do  you  remember  a  talk  we  had  the  night  we  arrived 
in  London?"  he  said  slowly. 

Yes,  Mary  remembered  it;  every  word  that  had  been 
spoken,  she  thought. 

"You  were  ver>''  unhappy  that  night  —  do  you  remem- 
ber how  we  had  to  remind  ourselves  that  we  could  n't  have 
foreseen  the  circumstances  that  had  placed  us  in  the  posi- 
tion in  which  we  found  ourselves  then?  .  .  .  the  position 
which  made  you  so  unhappy.  It's  all  in  that  still.  From 
our  point  of  view  we  had  n't  done  wrong.  In  the  result  we 
just  could  not  help  ourselves.  We  could  n't  have  averted, 
as  we  could  n't  have  foreseen,  what  had  happened.  Well, 
Mary,  I  had  my  plan,  as  you  say,  clearly  enough  defined 
and  fixed  before  that  —  before  we  married,  that  is,  and 
before  the  unlikely  things  happened  and  I  stepped  so  un- 
expectedly into  Joseph's  shoes.  It  was  all  quite  simple 
then.  The  children  would  have  grown  up  to  know  the 
protest  their  parents  had  thought  it  right  to  make.  As 
soon  as  they  could  have  understood  it,  we  should  have 
explained  it  to  them.  They  would  have  been  prepared  for 
it.  It  would  have  come  to  them  quite  naturally  and  they 
would  have  accepted  it  as  naturally.  Things  which  we 
could  no  more  control  than  we  could  foresee  changed  all 
that." 

He  had  no  plan,  then.  The  circumstances,  he  meant, 
admitted  now  of  no  plan.  He  was  tr>'ing  to  spare  her,  she 
knew  that;  trying  to  comfort  her  too,  as  he  had  tried  to 
comfort  her  before.  She  could  never  forget  what  he  had 
done  for  her,  the  great  instance  of  his  love  for  her  —  that 
and  a  hundred  others.   But  he  had  no  plan. 

"What  had  you  thought,  Mary?" 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  207 

"  I  was  waiting  for  my  boy's  father  to  speak  to  me." 

"We  could  only  both  wait.  We  have  to  face  this,  dear. 
We've  faced  things  before." 

"Together,"  Mary  said.  "But  this  — oh,  it's  David 
who  has  to  face  this." 

The  cry  was  wrung  from  her. 

"Maiy,  dearest,  think.  What  could  have  been  done? 
Could  he  have  been  told  before  he  went  to  school?  Would 
it,  at  his  age  then,  have  been  possible  to  tell  him?" 

She  knew  that  it  would  not. 

"Then  what  could  we  have  done  but  wait?" 

She  had  to  admit  that  they  could  have  done  nothing  else. 

"But  now,"  she  said.  "You  do  think  he  ought  to  be 
told  now?  You  would  have  consented  to  my  telling  him 
to-day  if  I  had  been  able  to  ask  you?  You  would  n't  have 
thought  I  had  acted  wrongly  if  I  had  told  him?" 

"No.  I  don't  think  I  should  ever  think  you  had  acted 
wrongly  about  anything.  But  I  should  see  a  very  different 
David  going  back  to  school." 

Mary  turned  harassed  eyes  on  him. 

"Why  different?" 

"A  sort  of  Ishmael.  His  hand  against  every  man  be- 
cause he  suspected  every  man's  hand  to  be  against  him. 
Don't  you  see,  Mary?  He'd  become  self-conscious  too  — 
think  every  one's  eye  was  on  him,  and  that  every  one  was 
talking  of  him  before  his  face  and  behind  his  back.  He 
would  n't  have  an  easy  moment  at  school  —  I'm  thinking 
of  my  school-days  —  and  you  would  n't  either.  Oh,  you'd 
know.  You'd  know  at  a  hundred  miles  distance  if  he  was 
unhappy.  Wouldn't  you?  You'd  know  from  the  other 
side  of  the  world." 

"  I  think  I  should,"  said  Mary. 

"Then,  do  you  see  why?"  said  David's  father. 

Late  into  the  night  they  talked.  One  or  other  of  the 
three  lamps,  with  what  David  called  the  clockwork  in- 
sides,  gave  a  little  click  at  times,  or  an  inward  gurgle. 


208  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

John  sometimes  resumed  his  pacing  and  sometimes  sat 
still. 

"Not  tell  him?"  Mary  said  at  last. 

"I  should  wait.  If  they  know,  he'll  know,  and  I  don't 
think  it  would  spare  him  very  much  if  he  did  know  be- 
fore they  told  him.  They  may  never  tell  him,  though 
that,  I  grant  you,  is  very  unlikely." 

"But  he'll  have  to  know  even  if  they  don't  tell  him." 

"He  will  know,"  said  David's  father. 

If  she  could  but  be  certain  of  something  else!  If  she 
could  but  feel  once  more  the  unshakeable  confidence  that 
she  had  placed  in  her  husband's  judgment,  and  —  shrink 
as  she  would  from  the  thought  —  in  her  husband  himself 
before  he  had  become  her  husband!  Was  he  not,  had  he 
never  been,  as  strong  as  she  in  her  worship  of  him  had  sup- 
posed him?  "He  for  God  only  —  she  for  God  in  him." 
Oh,  she  was  ready  to  admit  her  dependence.  But  had  he 
not  been  for  God  at  all  —  taking  *  God '  in  this  sense  to 
mean  all  that  they  had  always  been  agreed  that  'God' 
meant —  and  had  the  God  in  him  failed  her?  It  was  not  her 
fault  that  such  doubts  —  no,  they  were  still  but  shadows  of 
doubts  —  should  assail  her.  She  beat  them  back,  but  they 
returned  again  and  again  to  the  assault.  Ettringham, 
with  all  that  had  happened  there,  —  all,  indeed,  that  Et- 
tringham stood  for,  —  had  affected  her  more  than  she 
knew.  The  christening,  with  its  solemn  ritual,  the  family 
prayers,  assentings,  silences  that  gave  assent,  —  what 
were  these  but  public  recantings  of  all  that  had  been  held 
sacred?  Not  that  in  her  heart  of  hearts  David's  mother 
did  not  welcome  these  things  in  themselves.  The  consola- 
tions which  religion  had  to  offer  had  long  since  ceased  to 
be  to  her  as  vain  things,  and  with  poor  faithful  Betsy,  she 
had,  as  we  have  seen,  desired  them,  and  desired  them  ar- 
dently, for  her  children.  But  —  ah,  the  But  remained. 
Could  she  forget  that,  by  implication  at  least,  John,  in 
consenting  to  accept  the  Church's  ministrations  on  behalf 
of  the  son  of  his  tardy  marriage,  swept  away  all  that  had 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  209 

sanctified  her  own  former  state,  or  even  saved  it  from  be- 
ing indeed  what  those  who  had  hurt  her  so  grievously  had 
thought  it? 

So  the  hours  went  by.  Twelve  struck,  and  one.  All  the 
sounds  in  the  house  had  ceased,  the  servants  long  ago  in 
their  beds  and  sleeping  the  sleep  of  finished  labour,  or, 
maybe  equally  soundly,  the  sleep  of  labour  shamelessly 
scamped.  David  slept;  Georgina;  and  Johnny  —  Johnny 
of  the  assured  position,  of  the  one  unassailable  right  to 
a  place  in  the  scheme  of  things  and  to  a  name  of  his 
own. 

"My  poor  children,"  Mary  said  to  herself.  "My  poor 
three  children." 

And  so,  like  Pepys,  to  bed.  Nothing  was  settled  — 
what  could  be?  —  unless  it  may  be  said  to  have  been  set- 
tled that  David  was  not  to  be  told.  But,  as  at  the  very 
last  moment  Mary  reserved  the  right  to  tell  him  herself, 
if,  in  her  judgment,  an  occasion  should  urgently  arise, 
even  this  was  not  definitely  settled.  And  that  anything 
that  concerned  David  so  intimately  and  so  tragically 
should  be  left  undecided,  and  thus  to  chance  or  accident, 
seemed  to  his  mother  of  all  things  most  horrible. 

Well,  for  to-night  she  could  think  no  more,  nor,  worn 
out  with  suffering,  even  suffer  any  more.  She  sat  for  some 
minutes  on  the  side  of  her  bed,  too  tired  even  to  begin  to 
undress. 

As  she  sat  so  she  heard  a  little  sound  from  David's  room, 
which  was  on  the  same  floor.  She  pulled  herself  together 
and  listened.  It  was  repeated.  It  was  only  a  little  cough; 
nothing  —  a  mere  clearing  of  the  throat. 

Hardly  knowing  what  she  was  doing  she  slipped  from 
the  room  and  across  the  passage,  but  as  her  hand  was  on 
the  latch  of  the  door  she  knew  what  she  was  going  to  do. 
If  he  was  awake  she  was  going  to  tell  him.  He  sat  up  in 
bed  as  she  crossed  the  threshold. 

She  went  over  to  him  quickly  and  put  her  arms  round 


210  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

him.  She  had  not  brought  her  candle  with  her,  but  the 
blind  was  up  and  the  room  was  not  wholly  dark. 

"David,"  she  said  quickly,  without  giving  herself  time 
to  think,  "you  know  what  you  told  me  to-day  about  — 
about  succeeding  —  about  becoming  Sir  Thingamy  P. 
yourself  some  day.   You're  not  counting  on  it,  are  you?" 

"No,"  he  said  shortly,  and  then  said  "No"  again. 

"  Because  —  I  've  something  to  tell  you,  David,  some- 
thing you  must  know  ..." 

He  said  "Yes,"  in  the  same  way. 

Her  arms  closed  more  tightly  round  him.  He  was  strong 
and  firm,  and  gave  promise  of  fine  development  in  the 
next  few  years.  She  knew  suddenly  that  there  would  be 
shelter  for  her  head  upon  his  shoulder  when  all  the  storms 
should  have  passed  over  her.  At  the  same  moment  she 
felt  a  slight  tremor  pass  through  him. 

"Is  that  you,  Mother?" 

She  held  him  from  her  that  she  might  look  at  him. 

"Have  n't  you  heard  what  I've  been  saying?" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"What  time  is  it?" 

"  But  you  answered  me." 

He  shook  his  head  again.  She  thought  for  a  moment 
and  then  said  absently — "Very  late,  darling,  —  nearly 
half  past  one." 

"You  did  n't  hear  me  come  in?"  she  said  after  a  pause. 

"No.  Why  did  you?  Why  are  n't  you  in  bed?" 

"Your  father  and  I  have  been  talking." 

"What  about?" 

"Oh,  you,  perhaps." 

Even  now  she  was  half  minded  to  tell  him. 

But  he  spoke. 

" I'll  tell  you  what  I  really  want  to  he,  Mother." 

"What  darling?" 

"You  promise  you  won't  try  to  prevent  me?" 

"  I  can't  promise  that,  David." 

"You  can  promise  that  you'll  think  about  it?" 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  211 

"We're  sure  to  do  that,  your  father  and  I,  whatever  it 
is." 

"  I  want  to  be  —  No,  I  think  I  won't  tell  you  to-night. 
Mummy." 

"Very  well,  darling.  In  your  own  good  time.  Perhaps 
things  are  better  not  told  on  impulses,  or  for  that  matter 
in  the  middle  of  the  night." 

She  smiled  in  the  darkness  as  she  kissed  him,  and  then, 
conscious  suddenly  of  the  deadly  fatigue  which  had  held 
her,  and  which  now  as  a  fog  that  rolls  back  enveloped  her 
once  more,  body  and  mind,  clogging  her  movements  and 
clouding  her  brain,  she  dragged  herself  painfully  and  with 
great  effort  from  the  room,  and  across  the  landing  to  her 
own! 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  day  of  her  walk  with  David  and  of  her  talk  with  his 
father  was  the  day  when  Mary  reached  the  second  of  the 
three  stages  of  her  pilgrimage.  From  being  a  young  woman 
she  entered  then,  definitely,  upon  the  period  of  her  middle- 
age. 

Not  all  at  once  did  the  signs  of  this  make  themselves 
generally  apparent.  Not  for  many  years  yet  was  her  girl- 
ish figure  to  lose  its  slenderness  or  its  flowing  lines.  But 
it  was  from  this  day  that  grey  hairs  began  to  show  them- 
selves in  the  thick  brown  strands  and  the  shining  coils  that 
were  Betsy's  pride.  From  the  morning  when  Betsy  said, 
"Why,  if  you  haven't  got  some  grey  hairs,  m'lady!" 
(while  as  yet  they  were  countable,  and  even  counted!)  to 
the  day  when  Betsy's  moan,  "Why,  you're  going  grey, 
m'lady, — absolutely  going  grey,''  was  almost  accusatory 
in  its  protesting  vehemence,  seemed  but  a  short  time. 

Betsy,  far  more  concerned  than  her  mistress,  pointed 
this  out. 

"Very  likely,  Betsy.  One  can't  keep  young  for  ever." 

"But  at  your  age,  m'lady.  Why,'m,  at  your  age,  even 
I'd  hardly  began.  Of  course  I've  been  pepper-and-salt 
for  some  years,  but  think  of  the  difference  between  you, 
'm,  and  me  —  and  me  a  working  woman  into  the  bargain. 
A  lady  has  no  call  to  go  grey  till  years  and  years  older  than 
you  are." 

David's  mother  smiled. 

"It's  what  goes  on  inside  one's  head  that  settles  how 
long  the  colour  of  the  outside  of  it  is  to  last,  I  suppose." 

"I've  never  held  much  with  washes  or  lotions,"  Betsy 
said,  "but  if  this  continues  I  shall  have  to  look  out  for 
something —  I  can  see  —  make  enquiries,  anyway." 

"I'll  use  no  messes,"  said  David's  mother.  "If  I'm  to 
be  grey  I  'm  to  be  grey." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  213 

It  became  plain  that  she  was  to  be  grey.  Before  she  was 
fifty,  —  but  this  is  to  look  forward  a  long  way,  of  course, 
—  quite  grey.  In  time,  Betsy,  deploring  as  long  as  there 
remained  any  hope,  had  to  admit  that  the  greyness  was 
very  becoming.  Her  mistress,  indeed,  was  only  exchanging 
one  beauty  for  another. 

Her  face  was  subtly  altering  too.  All  that  the  years 
had  written  upon  it  was  beginning  to  be  perceptible  now 
in  faint  but  indisputable  lines.  David,  when  he  was  old 
enough  to  read  the  writings  of  the  years,  was  to  under- 
stand why  the  beauty  of  the  face  was  never  diminished  by 
them.  Rather,  he  sometimes  thought,  did  their  presence 
enhance  it.  Nothing  ignoble  was  written  there,  nothing 
small,  nothing  selfish.  But  before  he  was  old  enough  to 
understand  fully,  he  was  to  become  conscious  of  the 
changes  that  had  begun. 

Mary  had  never  had  very  much  colour,  but  it  was  now 
that  her  cheeks  began  to  assume  the  ivory  whiteness  which 
was  the  tone  of  her  complexion  in  all  her  later  life.  Her 
skin  never  lost  the  fineness  of  its  texture.  It  was  always 
clear  as  wax.  The  pallor  which  it  now  wore  had  no  look  of 
ill-health. 

She  was,  however,  not  so  strong  as  before.  This  shewed 
itself  in  many  small  ways.  Johnny  had  grown  very  quickly 
too  big  for  her  to  carry.  He  now  became  too  big  for  her  to 
lift.  From  "Goodness,  what  a  heavy  boy!"  it  was  a  short 
step  to  "No,  Johnny,  too  great  a  weight  altogether  for 
your  poor  old  mother."  Johnny  was,  thus,  in  after  years 
never  to  be  able  to  remember,  as  David  and  Georgina  al- 
ways could,  a  young  mother  at  all.  To  him,  to  his  uncon- 
scious loss,  parents  and  guardians  —  fathers,  mothers, 
Betsys  —  were  all  equally  elderly  persons  of  certainly  no 
like  passions  with  himself.  She  could  not  read  out  for 
hours  at  a  stretch.  It  was  Georgina  who  claimed  the  read- 
ings now  —  Georgina  for  the  attentive  listener  who  used 
to  be  David,  with  Johnny  for  the  Georgina  who  had 
played  about  on  the  floor  of  old,  half  listening  and  half 


214  DAVID   PENSTEPHEN 

occupied  with  other  diversions.  She  read  often  till  her 
voice  failed,  but  it  failed  sooner  than  it  used,  and  then 
she  had  to  put  the  book  aside — the  Arabian  Nights  (ex- 
purgated) or  The  Swiss  Family  Robinson,  or  Holiday  House, 
or,  later,  The  Wide  Wide  World,  as  the  case  might  be  — 
and  confess  herself  unable  to  go  on.  Her  step,  at  the  out- 
set, at  least,  lost  nothing  of  its  spring.  She  was  as  ready 
as  ever  for  the  walks  with  David,  which  were  always  her 
chief  delight  in  the  holidays  that  brought  him  back  to  her 
three  times  a  year,  but  presently  David  noticed  that  there 
began  to  be  days  when  he  had  to  adapt  his  pace  to  hers, 
as  once  in  turn  his  father  had  had  to  adapt  (but  had  not 
adapted!)  his  pace  to  David's. 

"Tired,  Mummy?" 

"No,  darling,  but  your  legs  are  getting  longer  than 
mine"  (as,  with  the  coming  of  each  fresh  holidays,  they 
indeed  were),  or,  "No,  darling,  but  I'm  not  growing 
younger,"  and  sometimes  even  "Yes,  darling,  a  little." 

So  the  changes  came  and  time  went  on.  Nor  were  the 
changes  only  in  Mary.  She  for  her  part  saw  plenty.  With 
her  they  had  begun  in,  and  on,  a  day;  that  was  all. 

But  a  thing  that  gave  Mary  extraordinary  pleasure  at 
this  time  was  the  devotion  that  she  began  to  observe  as 
existing  increasingly  between  David  and  his  little  brother. 
Johnny,  from  the  moment  when  he  had  been  able  to  dis- 
tinguish one  person  from  another,  had  shewn  unmistake- 
able  signs  of  a  predilection  for  David,  and  David  had  spas- 
modically responded,  but  of  late  it  had  become  apparent 
that  the  attraction  had  become  mutual,  and  that  in  each 
case  it  had  drawn  to  itself  a  whole-hearted  and  genuine 
affection.  This  could  not  but  make  Mary  happy.  One  of 
her  fears  had  always  been  that  her  sons  should  dislike  one 
another.  It  had  seemed  to  her  sometimes  that  two  persons 
of  one  parentage,  so  strangely  placed,  could  not  fail  —  all 
ignorant  as  they  might  be  of  their  position  —  to  have  some 
deep-lying  mistrust  of  each  other.  This  fear  had  been  laid 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  215 

now  for  good.  It  rested  perhaps  upon  no  very  reasonable 
foundations.  It  had  been  real  enough,  for  all  that.  David 
coming  back  to  London,  or  only  perhaps  from  a  walk, 
would  call  for  Johnny.  Johnny,  regardless  of  the  feelings  of 
those  who  had  been  playing  with  him,  or  looking  after  him, 
would  fly  to  David  —  and  from  no  matter  what.  Behold 
Johnny  pick-a-back  then,  his  arms  tight  round  his  brother's 
throat,  proud  as  a  peacock,  and  shouting  the  house  down ! 

"David,  you'll  spoil  him,  I  can  never  get  him  to  be  good 
when  he's  been  with  you." 

David  would  laugh,  showing  his  white  young  teeth. 

"Then  call  for  me.  Mother,  and  I'll  make  him  good!" 

"I'll  be  good,  for  David,"  Johnny  had  the  impudence 
to  say  once.  But  to  that  David  answered  immediately, 
"You'll  jolly  well  be  good,  for  your  mother!" 

The  supreme  proof  of  David's  power  was  that  David 
could,  if  need  were,  even  make  him  take  medicine!  Betsy, 
when  a  pill  or  a  powder  was  the  grim  order  of  the  day  or 
night,  made  no  scruple  to  call  for  David  when  he  was  there, 
or  upon  his  name  when  he  was  n't. 

Calm  once  more;  the  trivial  round,  the  common  task. 
But  it  was  another  sort  of  calm.  Resignation  was  in  it, 
and  even  renouncement.  Mary,  whether  against  her  bet- 
ter judgment  or  not  she  no  longer  knew,  had  given  in  to 
waiting.  She  had  not  spoken  to  David.  She  did  not  even 
yet  know  whether  he  knew. 

How  little  in  some  ways  she  did  know  of  him.  He  was 
franker,  perhaps,  than  most  boys,  but  a  whole  side  of  his 
life  was  hidden  from  her.  She  guessed  vaguely  at  the  diffi- 
culties which  must  have  beset  him,  and  at  which  we  have 
glanced.  He  never  told  her  of  these.  They  were,  as  she 
divined,  the  things  that  he  could  not  have  brought  himself 
to  speak  of.  She  never  heard  of  the  purgatory  of  the  early 
Chapels.  She  heard  of  the  beauty  that  he  discovered  in 
the  services,  and  the  delight  which  the  poetry  of  the  new- 
found Bible  was  to  him.    They  talked  of  those  things 


2i6  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

often.  What  were  his  young  religious  views?  She  dared 
not  ask  him  outright.  There  was  the  term  which  saw  his 
confirmation.  How  anxious  she  had  been  then.  His  father 
had  raised  no  objections  when  the  head  master,  who  of 
course  did  know,  had  written  to  him  on  the  subject  of  this. 
He  had  rephed  in  a  letter  which  he  had  shown  to  her,  mak- 
ing all  easy  by  leaving  the  matter  to  the  discretion  of  the 
authorities  and  to  the  feeling  of  the  boy  himself.  "Your 
son,"  came  the  answer,  "seems  to  wish  it,  and  I  think  we 
should  be  guided  by  that."  John  wrote  that  he  had  no 
more  to  say.  And  David  was  confirmed. 

But,  oh,  what  lay  behind  it  all?  There  must  have  been 
heart-searchings  for  him,  as  there  were  heart-searchings 
for  her  then.  She  envied  other  mothers  whom  no  doubts 
assailed.  They  at  least  could  pray  for  their  sons  at  such 
times.  She  too  could  pray,  and  did  pray,  we  may  be  sure, 
but,  oh,  to  have  had,  as  they  had, a  Person  to  address!  And 
to  have  been  able,  as  they,  she  supposed,  were  able,  to 
talk  on  these  matters  openly,  and,  from  her  own  greater 
knowledge,  give  counsel  and  help. 

She  looked  for  signs  of  some  notable  spiritual  experi- 
ence when  she  saw  David  next.  But  she  found  no  diflfer- 
ence  in  him,  and  was  perplexed,  and  then  somehow  thank- 
ful. Not  yet  was  she  left  behind.  But  it  puzzled  her 
sometimes,  and  even  sometimes  made  her  unhappy,  that 
he  asked  her  no  questions. 

Why  did  he  not  comment  to  her  on  his  own  upbringing 
and  Georgina's?  Betsy  was  allowed  to  take  Johnny  to 
church,  Georgina  sometimes  accompanying  her,  and  some- 
times David  himself.  Why  did  he  not  ask  her  why  he  at 
Johnny's  age  had  not  been  taken?  Why  did  he  not  tell 
her  of  the  distress  that  must  have  been  caused  in  the  early 
days  (she  was  guessing!)  not,  as  was  usual  with  boys,  by 
having  to  say  his  sensitive  prayers  in  the  face  of  derision, 
but  by  his  not  having  any  to  say?  Why  did  he  not  ask  her 
the  reason  for  all  the  things  which  marked  his  home  lessons 
as  having  been  different  from  those  of  other  boys? 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  217 

She  believed  sometimes  that  he  knew. 

She  could  only  watch  him,  hoping  that  one  day  the 
strings  of  his  tongue  would  be  loosed. 

He  had  outgrown  the  little  theatre  now,  though  its  day 
had  been  a  long  one.  Perhaps  the  toy  (which  was  n't  a 
toy)  grew  too  elaborate  in  its  later  phases.  The  successive 
stages  had  grown  deeper  and  deeper  to  admit  of  more  am- 
bitious effects.  When  a  row  of  gas-burners  took  the  place 
of  the  delightful  tin  footlights  with  the  wicks  and  the 
smelly  colza  oil,  perhaps  its  doom  was  already  struck.  He 
had  turned  to  other  things;  begun  to  learn  dancing.  The 
plays  were  put  away;  the  theatre  itself  (swathed,  to  be 
sure,  in  sheets  of  newspaper  to  keep  the  dust  from  it  and 
preserve  it)  was  relegated  to  a  shelf  in  the  box-room  at  the 
top  of  the  house.  It  was  done  with,  but  it  had  served  its 
purpose. 

It  had  gone  the  way  of  old  toys.  When  you  are  a  man, 
or  going  to  be  a  man,  you  put  away  childish  things,  that  is 
all.  But  it  was  in  good  company  in  its  retirement.  On  the 
same  shelf  stood  the  little  holland-covered  box  of  enduring 
memory. 

She  believed  that  he  knew.  She  could  not  have  told 
when  first  the  conviction  came  to  her.  She  searched  his  face 
sometimes  for  confirmation  of  her  suspicions.  He  was  grow- 
ing very  like  now  to  what  his  father  had  been  as  a  young 
man  —  the  same  steady  outlook  from  level  eyes;  the 
same  tall  well-covered  slenderness ;  the  same  easy  carriage. 
His  voice  even  had  something  of  the  same  tone.  But 
there  all  resemblances  ceased. 

It  seemed  to  her  so  wonderful  sometimes  that  this  grow- 
ing unknowable  creature  should  once  have  been  part  of 
herself;  or  that  what  she  had  known  so  intimately  should, 
under  her  eyes,  have  developed  into  this  big  young  stran- 
ger. No,  it  was  not  under  her  eyes  that  the  miracle  had 
taken  place.  It  was  in  the  months  of  the  years  of  the  re- 
curring separations  that  the  changes  were  worked.   Always 


2i8  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

he  came  back  to  her  a  little  bigger,  a  little  older,  a  little  more 
mature.  Difficult  to  say  whether  the  changes  were  the 
more  apparent  mentally  or  physically.  Listening  to  him 
sometimes  —  he  had  opinions  now,  if  you  please,  on  poli- 
tics, literature,  art !  —  she  thought  the  one.  Looking  at 
his  body  which  athletics  had  developed,  the  other.  Her 
heart  swelled  with  pride  when  she  saw  him  stripped  for 
bathing.  She  remembered  a  term  that  her  husband  had 
applied  to  her  children.  Yes,  David  was  truly  as  he  had 
claimed  for  him,  in  the  most  sacred  sense,  a  Love-Child. 
Happier  women  might  have  envied  her  here,  and  probably 
did  so  envy  her.  But  there  was  a  little  despair  even  in  this 
thought  also. 

But  as  the  fear  for  the  harmony  between  the  brothers 
was  dissipated,  another  began  slowly  to  take  its  place. 
She  began  to  see  that  there  was  no  communion  of  thought 
between  David  and  his  father.  In  his  father's  presence 
David  was  silent.  At  first  when  she  became  aware  of  this 
she  had  been  content  to  attribute  it  to  shyness.  David 
had  never,  she  thought,  been  on  such  unrestricted  terms 
of  confidence  with  his  father  as  those  which  had  always 
marked  his  relations  with  herself.  Were  any  boys  quite 
free  from  some  feeling  of  awe  of  their  fathers?  But  pres- 
ently, though  she  called  to  mind  John's  "Boys  are  odd 
creatures,  remember  —  shy  with  their  parents  to  a  degree 
that's  unbelievable,"  she  saw,  or  thought  she  saw,  that 
awe,  in  the  sense  in  which  she  had  applied  the  word  to  the 
case,  had  no  part  in  David's  feelings.  David's  was  not  the 
shyness,  then,  that  is  based  on  any  sort  of  fear,  or  indeed 
on  any  self-distrust.  John's  words  took  a  fresh  signifi- 
cance. They  shewed  her  suddenly  that  he  was  conscious 
of  the  reserve  in  the  attitude  of  his  son.  Poor  John.  Were 
they  even  in  some  sort  an  admission  of  failure?  She  would 
not  let  herself  think  this.  But  she  continued,  now,  reluc- 
tantly to  observe. 

Georgina,  who  took  life  very  smoothly  indeed,  as  her  long- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  219 

suffering  governess  could  have  told  you,  and  altogether 
was  contented  with  things  as  they  were,  joked  frankly  with 
her  father.  No  'shyness'  there,  no  suggestion  of  restraint. 
She  respected  his  authority,  but,  out  of  hours,  as  it  were, 
could  meet  him  on  bantering  terms,  taking  and  thrusting, 
wholly  at  her  very  comfortable  ease.  Atmospheres  trou- 
bled not  the  Georgina,  who  had  babbled  on,  as  we  may  re- 
member, upon  the  dreadful  morning  of  the  departure  from 
Brussels.  A  frown  did  not  abash  her. 

Nor  was  Johnny  tongue-tied  in  the  presence  of  John. 
He  knew  his  own  importance  too  well  for  that.  He,  for  all 
the  world  to  see,  was  the  apple  of  his  father's  eye. 

Only  David  was  silent  with  him.  Or  perhaps  it  was  not 
so  much  that  he  was  silent,  as  that  he  did  not  address  him 
if  there  was  any  one  else  whom  he  could  address.  And 
perhaps  even  that  was  to  overstate  the  case.  For  the  two 
did  talk,  of  course,  —  often,  as  she  reminded  herself,  at 
great  length.  But  .  .  .  no,  it  was  not  her  imagination  .  .  . 
there  was  between  them  an  acting  and  reacting  constraint. 
Was  it,  as  she  suspected,  that  David  knew?  She  was 
afraid  now  to  bring  things  to  a  head  by  seeming  to  perceive. 
Might  she  not  confirm  what  as  yet  she  only  feared?  Not 
that  she  did  not  hope  that  David  did  indeed  know;  her 
dread  was  that  knowledge  should  have  implied  judgment. 

"David,"  —  so  far  she  ventured  one  day  when  he  had 
asked  her  to  go  for  a  walk  with  him,  —  "why  don't  you 
sometimes  get  your  father  to  go  with  you?" 

"Don't  you  want  to  come.  Mother?" 

His  mother  laughed. 

"  I  think  I  always  want  to  go  with  you,  —  and  —  that's 
perhaps  why." 

"Oh,  Father  would  say  if  he  wanted  to  come  too." 

"I  meant  alone  with  you." 

"Instead  of  you?" 

She  nodded. 

"But  why?" 

She  had  just  told  him. 


220  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"  I  think  he  might  like  to  be  asked." 

"Oh,  well,  you  come  this  time,"  David  said  that  time, 
and  the  matter  dropped. 

She  watched  to  see  whether  her  suggestion  would  be 
carried  out  later.  She  thought  that  David,  who  never  as  a 
rule  was  undecided  about  anything  that  he  meant  or 
wanted  to  do,  did  linger  the  next  day  on  the  flagged  paths 
of  the  garden,  where  his  father  was  sitting  after  luncheon, 
but  whether  he  spoke  or  not  she  did  not  know,  and  she  did 
know  that  that  afternoon  David  went  out  alone. 

Was  it  knowledge  and  judgment,  and  if  judgment,  what 
would  follow? 

Why,  why  had  she  not  told  him?  She  had  known  in  her 
heart  that  it  was  she  or  his  father  who  ought  to  have  told 
him,  and  that  the  telling  ought  to  have  taken  place  while 
his  mind  was  still  very  young.  She  knew  now  that  she 
had  deceived  herself,  and  it  was  against  her  better  judg- 
ment that  she  had  been  silent.  And  so  it  was  open  rupture 
that  she  feared  —  not  between  David  and  herself ;  come 
what  might  she  was  sure  of  David;  but  between  David 
and  his  father.  How  could  David  be  expected  to  under- 
stand? If  the  iron  had  entered  into  his  soul  the  sense  of 
injury  would  be  ineradicable,  the  wound  also  too  deep  for 
healing.  And  the  shock,  though  it  could  not  have  been 
averted,  might  have  been  mitigated.  The  sting,  for  her, 
lay  there. 

And  as  time  went  on  and  nothing  happened,  her  fears 
would  be  lulled  and  something  like  happiness  would  en- 
fold her.  So  much  that  she  could  never  have  hoped  for  had 
come  to  her.  Ker  home  —  that  she  should  have  a  home! 
—  was  an  abiding  solace  to  her.  What  shelter  the  pan- 
elled walls  of  her  own  little  sitting-room  afforded  her.  In 
the  days  of  the  wandering  she  had  not  been  able  to  do 
much  work,  nor  cared  greatly  for  the  sewings  and  stitch- 
ings  that  engross  most  women,  but  here  her  needle  was  her 
constant  agreeable  companion.    She  made  and  she  em- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  221 

broidered  and  she  mended.  She  took  pride  in  her  linen 
cupboard,  and  marked  or  re-marked  every  sheet  and  table- 
cloth, napkin  and  towel,  with  cunning  embroideries.  For 
pleasant  hours  the  sound  of  her  thread  passing  rhythmi- 
cally through  hemp  or  flax  would  be  for  her  the  gentle 
sound,  as  it  were,  of  the  passing  of  time  itself. 

"You  don't  leave  me  enough  to  do,  m'lady,"  Betsy 
would  complain.  "All  this  ought  by  rights  to  be  done  in 
the  nursery,  which  should  stand  for  the  workroom  in  this 
house.  There's  Ellen  eating  her  head  off".  I'm  sure  I'm 
often  put  to  it  to  find  something  to  give  her  to  do." 

David's  mother  smiled  to  herself. 

"Look,  Betsy,"  —  she  held  up  an  embroidered  initial 
for  Betsy's  inspection.  "Would  a  young  thing  like  Ellen 
do  them  quite  like  this,  do  you  think?"  She  was  really 
proud  of  her  handiwork.  Not  a  stitch  was  ill-placed  or  ill- 
executed. 

"Most  probably  and  not,"  was  the  exact  form  of  Betsy's 
admission. 

"Then  don't  grudge  me  my  occupation,"  said  David's 
mother. 

Her  work  was  to  her  what  other  women's  social  duties 
and  amusements  were  to  them.  What  greater  pleasure 
than  the  sense  of  housewifery  that  these  domestic  activi- 
ties afforded  her?  They  represented  to  her  all  that  had  for 
so  long  been  denied  to  her.  The  mothers  of  Israel,  after 
the  forty  years  of  tents  in  the  wilderness,  may  have  felt 
something  akin  to  what  she  felt  when,  at  length,  they  knew 
what  it  was  to  have  roofs  once  more  over  their  heads,  and 
houses  to  set  and  keep  in  order.  She  enjoyed  all  that  had 
to  do  with  her  housekeeping:  her  shoppings;  her  modest 
still-room;  the  stocking  and  the  disposition  of  her  store- 
room. It  was  one  of  Georgina's  and  Johnny's  most  treas- 
ured pleasures,  as,  in  its  time,  it  had  been  one  of  David's 
and  Georgina's,  to  be  present  when  she  gave  out  the  gro- 
ceries for  the  week.  Servants  had  their  allowances  then: 
so  much  tea,  so  much  sugar.    The  sweet-smelling  store- 


222  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

room  behind  the  pantry  —  what  was  there  that  it  did  not 
contain,  from  coffee  to  candles;  tapioca  to  treacle  or  even 
tin  tacks;  soap,  starch,  soda,  to  spices  and  semolina  and 
sago  and  string;  jams  to  juniper  berries;  figs  to  flavourings? 
—  was  a  grocer's  shop  in  little. 

The  years  of  lodgings  and  hotels  had  not  unfitted  her 
for  housekeeping.  She  fell  into  it  as  readily  and  as  easily  as 
if  all  her  life  had  been  spent  in  managing  a  house,  and  the 
time  abroad  but  a  brief  interruption  in  a  long  and  famil- 
iar routine.  She  knew  instinctively  what  to  order  and 
how  much ;  knew  approximately  what  things  ought  to  cost ; 
how  to  choose  and  how  to  control  her  servants.  Every- 
thing that  went  smoothly  spoke  to  her  personal  care  and 
her  good  generalship.  She  took  pride,  as  she  took  pleasure, 
in  the  ordering  of  her  house.  There  was  thus  a  refuge  for 
her  in  all  the  businesses  of  the  busy  day.  Without  these, 
as  she  grew  older,  her  life  would  have  been  unprotected 
indeed.  They  stood  to  her,  that  is,  as,  in  its  time  and  its 
turn,  the  little  theatre  to  David,  for  solace  and  for  sanc- 
tuary. 


CHAPTER  IX 

Neither  had  David  given  her  the  confidence  which  was 
on  his  lips  on  the  night  when  she  had  gone  to  his  room  and 
wakened  him  out  of  sleep.  He  might  have  spoken  then, 
as  she,  in  turn,  could  have  spoken.  What  he  was  to  be  was 
still  undivulged.  He  was  to  go  to  Oxford;  so  much  was 
assumed  to  be  settled.  But  for  him,  as  for  her,  though  for 
very  different  reasons,  Oxford  meant  but  a  marking  of  time. 

When  he  turned  his  mind,  in  after  years,  to  this  period 
he  could  be  surprised  at  his  own  tenacity.  He  never  wa- 
vered in  his  purpose  —  never,  as  the  old  man  in  the  dingy 
shop  had  prophesied,  looked  back.  His  school -days  them- 
selves were  shadowy  in  comparison.  Individual  boys  at 
whose  arrival  he  had  been  excited,  and  with  whom  he 
made  friends  or  did  not  achieve  friendship,  or  who  upon 
acquaintance  were  disappointing,  stood  out  for  him  in 
recollection.  Individual  days:  summer  evenings  when  the 
softness  of  the  air,  or  the  way  the  light  lingered  on  the 
trees  and  the  slopes,  almost  hurt  him  for  sheer  beauty: 
wistful  autumn  afternoons,  brown  and  shining:  cold  misty 
winter  evenings :  ardent  days  of  spring  —  these  too  stood 
out.  Boys  he  had  hated  —  often  for  some  physical  rea- 
son, some  want  of  proportion  or  some  defect  or  even  trick 
which  offended  him  —  he  could  remember  too.  And  days, 
but  not  so  very  many,  which  had  seemed  to  be  cursed. 
But,  for  the  rest,  the  second  ten  years  of  his  life,  which 
embraced  the  whole  of  his  school-days,  did  not  make  so 
deep  an  impression  upon  him  as  the  first,  and  they  passed 
for  him  like  a  dream.  A  dream,  however,  which  held  a 
dream,  and  it  was  this  inner  dream  which  was  real. 

The  little  theatre  had  been  but  a  young  outlet  for  young 
feelings.  The  feelings  grew  with  the  power  to  feel.  The 
need  to  express  became  correspondingly  urgent.   And  so, 


224  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

while  external  things  slipped  by  without  leaving  much 
mark  upon  him,  so  that  he  was  never  to  have  any  vivid 
recollection  of  his  schooling,  his  dream  was  ever  before 
him.  He  told  no  one  —  not  the  best-beloved  of  his  friends ; 
not  one  of  the  successive  Davids  to  his  own  Jonathan,  or 
Jonathans,  as  the  case  might  be,  to  his  own  David.  Yet 
all  his  friendships,  particularly  the  less  happy  ones,  were 
involved  —  as  everything  else  that  caused  him  any  sort 
of  emotion.  His  emotions,  in  other  words,  were  what 
counted  with  him.  Something,  oddly,  was  accomplished 
when  he  had  put  the  friend  who  hurt  him,  or  who  had  the 
power  to  hurt  him,  out  of  his  heart.  He  could  not  have 
explained  this,  nor  did  he  try  to  explain  it  even  to  himself. 
He  had  to  accept  it,  as  each  one  of  us,  at  some  time  or 
other,  has  to  accept  his  own  temperament  with  all  its 
qualities  and  limitations.  So  where  his  dream  was  con- 
cerned, if  his  mother  was  not  vouchsafed  his  confidence, 
neither  was  any  one  else.  He  would  have  told  her  if  he 
could  have  told  anyone.  Why  then  did  he  not  tell  her? 
It  was  not  wholly  that  he  anticipated  opposition  —  though 
that  he  did  expect  it  he  had  shewn,  when,  on  that  mid- 
night impulse  which  she  had  not  attempted  to  encourage, 
he  had  begun  the  avowal  which  he  could  not  finish.  He 
could  detach  himself  sufficiently  to  be  able  to  hear,  as  it 
would  strike  other  ears,  the  phrase  which  he  would  prob- 
ably have  employed,  and  perhaps  he  had  enough  sense  of 
humour  to  perceive  the  absurd  sound  which  it  would  have 
for  them.  He  was  wholly  untried  as  yet.  He  must  have 
something  to  shew,  something  to  his  credit,  before  he  could 
proclaim  his  ambition.  For  it  was  an  ambition,  not  a  mere 
fancy.  The  phrase,  which  he  could  not  bring  himself  to 
speak,  held,  in  suggestion,  all  that  could  be  used  in  argu- 
ment against  —  against  the  putting  of  what  it  expressed 
into  practice!  Vaingloryings,  struttings,  boastings,  swag- 
gerings,  with  every  sort  of  self-conceit,  these  with  a  dozen 
other  meretricious  things  were  conveyed,  he  knew,  in  the 
sound  of  the  four  words.  There  could  be  but  opposition  in 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  225 

the  face  of  what  made  thus  for  prejudice.  But  these  were 
not  what  the  words  meant  to  him.  And  how  to  show  what 
they  did  mean  till  the  opportunity  of  proving  what  he 
could  do  should  present  itself?  So  he  waited,  chafing 
often,  filled  sometimes  with  divine  despairs,  but  —  the 
despairs,  indeed,  as  he  dimly  guessed,  part  of  his  equip- 
ment! —  never  wholly  discouraged.  What  that  was  worth 
doing  had  ever  been  done  easily?  The  kingdom  which  he 
desired  would  have  to  be  conquered.  There  were  citadels 
for  him  to  storm. 

Luck  was  against  him  for  a  long  time.  Theatricals 
always  ended  the  winter  term.  There  were  excitements 
in  the  air  about  midway  through  November,  and  then  it 
would  become  known  that  a  play  had  been  chosen  and 
was  being  cast.  The  lot  would  fall  upon  this  one  and  that 
of  the  boys,  who  would  be  sent  for  by  the  committee  of 
management,  which  was  composed  of  one  or  two  of  the 
younger  masters  and  a  group  of  the  monitors  and  older 
boys.  The  bigger  parts  were  divided,  not  always  too  suit- 
ably, amongst  this  committee ;  for  the  others  there  was  the 
rest  of  the  school  to  recruit  from. 

Amongst  two  hundred  boys,  there  was,  it  is  safe  to  say, 
plenty  of  talent  which  for  one  reason  or  another  was  over- 
looked. David  used  to  hold  his  breath,  as  it  were,  till 
every  part  was  filled.  Here  was  Chessington  Minor  who 
spoke  as  if  potatoes  were  in  his  mouth,  and  who  got  a  part 
two  years  running;  here  was  Litterson  who  could  n't  say  his 
5's  or  c's  and  called  himself  '  Litterthon,'  but  who  was  cast 
one  year  for  Cassius  in  Julius  CcBsar,  which  he  called 
*  Cathiuth  in  Juliuth  ThcBthar ';  here  was  a  part  even  for 
Smith,  who  thought  all  acting  rot,  and  who  only  took  it 
because,  if  you  were  in  the  theatricals,  you  got  off  some  of 
your  lessons  on  the  ground  of  the  rehearsals  which  you 
had  to  attend.  There  were  many  others  who  could  act  and 
who  did,  —  some  of  them  admirably,  —  but  there  were 
more  (amongst  whom  he  most  passionately  included  him- 
self), who,  if  it  could  only  somehow  be  known,  could  act 


226  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

too  and  even  perhaps  act  better.  There  was  a  boy  called 
CHptop,  a  born  comedian  (he  made  his  name  afterwards 
and  a  fortune  into  the  bargain!),  who  never  once  got  a 
look-in.  David  never  was  bitter.  His  disappointment 
sometimes  was. 

Four  years  passed  before  he  got  his  first  part.  For  four 
years,  once  in  each,  he  endured  the  suspenses,  yes,  and  the 
hopes  too  (they  had  to  be  'endured'  like  the  fears!)  which 
came  regularly  for  him  when  the  preliminaries  were  being 
arranged;  and  for  four  years  ate  his  heart  out  while  the 
happier  chosen,  having  been  admitted  to  the  mysteries  of 
the  rehearsals,  were  presently  actually  rehearsing.  Thrice 
happy  chosen!  For  four  years,  then,  the  disappointments 
having  been  got  over  as  they  always  were  and  the  Night 
arrived,  he  kicked  his  excited  heels,  and  clapped  his  excited 
hands,  from  the  happy  back  benches  where  the  boys  sat  be- 
hind the  rest  of  the  audience  in  the  transformed  Great  Hall. 

Then,  in  his  fifth  year,  he  got  a  part.  Even  then  he  did 
not  get  it  because  it  was  supposed  that  he  had  any  special 
aptitude  for  acting.  Why,  then?  Because  the  play  was 
Moliere's  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme,  and  it  was  known,  by 
no  means  to  his  credit,  that  he  could  speak  French. 

"It's  the  tailor's  part.  You're  supposed  to  be  a  tailor, 
you  know,  and  you  have  to  bring  M.  Jourdain"  (the  stage- 
manager  who  spoke  said  '  Jourdon'),  "his  clothes.  Do  you 
think  you  could  do  that?" 

David  thought  so. 

"It's  not  a  big  part.  I  should  think  you'd  be  able  to 
manage  it  all  right." 

It  was  certainly  not  a  big  part,  as  the  pencillings  in  the 
script  shewed  him,  but  it  was  a  part  at  last. 

"Well,  here  it  is.  You'd  better  read  it  through  with  me 
just  to  get  the  hang  of  it.  I'm  M.  Jourdon.  Are  you  a 
quick  study?" 

David  thought  fairly  quick. 

"Well,  I  '11  run  through  it  with  you  presently.  I  'd  meant 
the  part  for  young  Jackson  —  I  don't  much  believe  in 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  227 

making  experiments  —  but  Jackson's  accent's  so  bad, 
you  see." 

David,  who  knew  Jackson,  'saw'  right  enough.  The 
surprising  thing,  as  perhaps  he  saw  also,  was  that  M. 
'Jourdon'  should  see. 

He  had  to  be  content  with  this,  anyway,  and  to  have 
passed  the  mystic  portals  at  all  was  so  wonderful  that  the 
reason  for  his  admission  hardly  mattered.  Now  he  would 
not  be  shut  out  of  the  Great  Hall  when  the  stage  was  being 
erected!  Now  his  eyes  would  no  longer  vainly  follow  the 
lucky  company  of  the  players  as  they  went  off  to  rehearsal. 
Boyish  thoughts?  Very  real  ones  even  in  the  supreme 
moment  of  his  joy  that  a  chance  should  have  come  to  him 
at  last.  The  feeling  of  being  outside  had  not  been  one  of 
the  least  difficult  to  bear  calmly  in  the  years  of  his  young 
waiting.  What  wonder  that  such  trifling  aspects  of  his 
good  fortune  should  present  themselves  to  his  excitement? 
The  chance  which  had  come  to  him  might  be  small,  but 
it  brought  all  the  coveted  privileges  in  its  train.  He  had 
suffered  too  much  outside  shut  doors  not  to  exult  in  their 
mere  opening. 

He  took  the  script  and  retired  with  it  to  the  back  of  the 
room,  while  Tarpalin,  the  stage-manager,  — '  Jourdon 
Tarpalin'  as  David  called  him  now  in  his  own  mind, — 
interviewed  another  boy  who  had  been  sent  for  about  an- 
other part.  The  other  boy,  one  Crawton  Minimus,  in  the 
lower  school,  did  not  get  it,  because  of  his  accent,  though 
this  in  David's  opinion  was  quite  as  good  (as  well  it  might 
be!)  as  that  of  most  of  his  judges. 

"It  isn't  Bourgewaw,"  David  heard  Tarpalin  say; 
"it's  Bourgewah  —  W  A  H — wah;  like  a  in  far." 

That  was  the  beginning.  We  are  not  to  suppose  that 
he  did  great  things,  that  he  brought  down  the  house,  or 
played  the  others  off  the  stage.  He  did  none  of  these  things. 
He  was  more  nervous  on  the  Night  than  he  would  have 
supposed  possible.    He  could  eat  nothing  to  speak  of  at 


228  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

dinner  or  tea,  and  carried  his  script  about  with  him  all 
day.  His  fear  was  that  he  would  forget  his  words.  He 
wanted  to  arrange  a  code  of  signals  of  distress  beforehand 
with  the  prompter. 

"Goodness,"  said  Tarpalin,  sweating,  himself,  with  nerv- 
ousness, "if  you're  going  to  be  like  that  .  .  ." 

"I'm  not,"  said  David.   "Only  in  case,  I  meant." 

"  I  knew  we  were  wrong  to  try  experiments,"  said  Tar- 
palin. 

And  then  Tarpalin  wanted  reassuring,  himself.  It  was 
his  wig  that  felt  so  tight,  and  he  would  never  be  able  to 
stoop  in  these  breeches  either.  He  believed  they  must 
have  sent  the  wrong  ones  from  Abraham's.  And  had  n't 
the  man  given  him  too  many  lines?  Sure?  "Well,  don't 
you  give  me  wrong  cues,  young  Penstephen,  or  it'll  jolly 
well  be  the  worse  for  you.  Do  you  know  your  words  or 
don't  you?" 

"Of  course  I  do,"  said  David. 

"Then  what  do  you  want  to  talk  about  the  prompter 
for?  You  ought  n't  to  think  that  there  was  such  a  person. 
Good  Lx)rd,  if  you  dry  up  or  if  you  make  any  one  else  .  .  ." 

And  behind  the  nervousness,  and  through  it,  and  even 
in  it,  David  was  conscious  of  an  intoxicating  feeling  of 
excitement.  He  might  be  frightened,  but  he  would  not 
have  changed  his  fear  for  any  other  emotion.  The  rehears- 
als had  gone  but  too  quickly.  He  had  lived  from  one  to 
the  next,  counting  the  hours,  almost,  betw^een  them.  It  was 
so  enthralling  to  watch  and  to  see  how  the  play  shaped. 
Whether  it  was  a  good  play  or  not  he  had  not  the  remot- 
est idea:  it  was  a  play;  that  was  enough  for  him.  From 
the  chaos  of  the  stumbling  first  reading  —  Heavens,  the 
stumbling,  and  Heavens,  the  French!  —  to  the  compara- 
tive order  of  the  dress  rehearsal,  what  an  absorbing  process 
and  progression!  Not  that  there  seemed  to  be  much  prog- 
ress sometimes.  There  were  days  when  all  movement 
seemed  to  be  retrograde  —  when  the  proverbial  miracu- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  229 

lous  Allrightness  of  the  Night  seemed  to  be  the  only  pos- 
sible hope  for  the  play.  It  was  as  interesting  to  watch 
as  to  act  —  or  almost  as  interesting,  or  —  no,  you  were 
panting  to  play  all  the  parts  yourself  .  .  .  playing  them, 
too,  inside  you,  and,  as  you  waited  for  your  own  cue,  often 
playing  them  quite  differently.  That  was  why  a  rehearsal 
in  which  you  took  no  active  part  was  so  oddly  tiring.  You 
could  often  do  the  parts  which  you  did  n't  have  to  do,  so 
much  better  than  your  own  which  you  had ! 

During  this  time  life  had  been  more  vivid,  more  keenly 
lived,  than  ever  before.  He  was  n't  mistaken  in  what  he 
wanted.  This  was,  as  David  saw  it,  life.  All  the  other 
interests  and  pleasures  and  excitements  seemed  pale  and 
misty  in  comparison.  Some  of  the  boys  did  not  work  at 
their  parts.  They  would  glance  at  them  at  the  last  mo- 
ment and  trust  to  luck.  They  would  mislay  their  books. 
(David's  was,  ridiculously,  under  his  pillow  when  he 
slept.)  They  would  make  the  same  mistakes  every  time; 
forget  their  positions;  miss  their  cues;  be  fooling  when 
they  should  have  been  at  attention ;  be  absent  even,  keep 
the  stage  waiting. 

"Where's  CoUingham?  Where's  that  young  idiot,  Col- 
lingham!   CoUingham!  CoUingham!" 

The  name  would  go  resounding  through  the  Hall ;  through 
the  passage  outside,  where  hats  and  coats  hung,  and  where 
the  notice  board  was  on  which  were  posted  daily  the  school 
orders  or  directions  or  announcements  (the  hours  of  the 
rehearsals  amongst  them) ;  and  then  through  the  cloisters 
below,  where  the  grub-shop  kept  by  the  porter  was,  from 
which  perhaps  a  protesting,  spluttering  CoUingham  would 
hurriedly  and  shamefacedly  issue,  his  mouth  full  of  bis- 
cuit or  cake. 

To  care,  nay,  to  be  able,  to  think  of  anything  else! 

Or,  mistaking  buffoonery  for  comedy,  a  boy  would  want 
to  play  the  fool  on  the  stage  itself;  or  would  be  stupid;  or 
be  mule-obstinate. 

And  yet,  out  of  all  this,  some  sort  of  order.  Act  I  would 


230  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

go  vilely,  and  then  Act  I  would  go  well.  Act  II  would  go 
well,  and  then  it  would  be  Act  I  that  seemed  flat  and  stale 
and  unprofitable.  And  then,  lo,  two  acts  would  go  fairly 
smoothly.   Fascinating,  all  of  it. 

And  other  satisfactions.  To  his  surprise  he  began  to  see 
that  Jourdon  Tarpalin's  manner  toward  him  was  changing. 
The  patronising  tone  had  been  dropped  at  an  early  re- 
hearsal, and  that,  since  he  was  quick  to  see  that  the  older 
boy  was  not  prodigal  of  praise,  was  perhaps  as  muc  h  in 
the  way  of  approval  as  David  had  allowed  himself  to  ex- 
pect; but  by  degrees  he  became  conscious  of  something 
more.  Tarpalin,  in  small  ways,  let  David  see  that  he  was 
well  disposed  toward  him.  This,  David  with  quite  un- 
assumed  modesty  put  down  at  first  to  his  merely  not  being 
troublesome.  Tarpalin,  equable  enough  generally,  could 
pitch  into  the  boys  who  gave  him  trouble,  and,  if  he  was 
really  angry,  let  his  tongue  fly  to  some  purpose.  As  he, 
David,  was  keenly  interested  on  his  own  account  in  all 
that  went  on,  he  was  naturally  on  the  spot  when  he  was 
wanted.  But  presently  David  saw  that  it  was  for  no  nega- 
tive qualities  that  he  had  grown  in  his  manager's  estima- 
tion, but  that,  unlikely  as  it  seemed,  Tarpalin  believed  in 
him.  He  never  told  David  that  his  performance  was  good. 
He  just  watched  it,  not,  after  the  first,  interrupting  it  con- 
stantly as  he  did  most  of  the  others,  but  keeping  a  silence 
that  David  knew  somehow  was  not  condemnatory.  He 
would  put  another  boy  to  stand  for  Jourdain,  and  would 
go  down  into  the  body  of  the  hall.  Sometimes  he  whispered 
to  one  of  the  others  of  the  principals. 

His  severest  comment  to  David  was  that  sometimes  he 
could  n't  hear  him. 

"Speak  up  —  no,  not  you.  Penstephen,  I  mean.  The 
last  boy  on  the  last  bench  has  got  to  hear  you,  remember." 

Then  David  would  speak  a  little  louder. 

Some  of  the  others  he  never  let  alone  for  a  moment. 

"No,  no,  no.  Yes,  you,  CoUingham.  Not  a  bit  like  it. 
Good  Lord,  you  get  worse  every  time.  Take  your  entrance 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  231 

again,  and,  for  goodness'  sake,  man,  try  to  remember  that 
you're  a  girl.  Not  a  blooming  little  shrimp  trying  to  play 
a  coal-heaver.  And  where  ought  you  to  be  now?  Below 
the  table,  you  ass,  below,  not  above  it !  Which  is  above  and 
which  is  below?  Do  you  know?  And  which  is  your  right 
hand  and  which  is  your  left?  Then  behave  as  if  you  did. 
Now,  have  you  marked  it?  Well,  mark  it.  Good  Lord,  how 
many  times  have  I  got  to  tell  you!  For  goodness'  sake, 
some  one  see  that  he  does  mark  it.  Now,  are  we  ready! 
Then  once  more." 

And  then  it  would  be  another  of  the  young  actors  or  an- 
other who  would  come  in  for  his  displeasure. 

"Johnson.  Stop.  Stop,  I  say.  Do  you  hear  me!  Cross 
on  that  line.  Yes,  you  've  always  crossed  on  that.  Not  so 
far.  There.  Stand  still.   Now,  speak." 

Johnson  would  cross,  fidget  with  his  hands  and  his  feet, 
and  be  struck  with  dumbness. 

"Give  him  the  line." 

And  perhaps  the  prompter  would  have  lost  his  place, 
and  would  give  the  wrong  line.  And  then  it  would  be  the 
prompter's  turn. 

Tarpalin  was  very  just.  He  did  not  turn  upon  you  with- 
out cause.  So  that  not  to  be  pitched  into,  and  above  all 
not  to  be  pulled  up  too  often,  meant  that  you  were  giving 
satisfaction. 

Presently,  though  David  was  so  much  younger  than  he, 
Tarpalin  would  talk  to  him  as  to  one  of  the  bigger  boys. 

"Have  you  done  much  acting?" 

David  practically  had  done  none. 

Tarpalin  looked  surprised. 

"Then  how  do  you  know  what  to  do?" 

"Oh,  I  suppose  one  tries  to  think  what  one  would  do  if 
one  really  were  the  person  one's  supposed  to  be.  The  words 
are  a  guide,  are  n't  they?" 

"I  sometimes  wonder,"  said  Tarpalin,  "when  I  listen 
to  some  of  these  chaps!" 

Another  day  he  wanted  to  know  how  David  knew  as 
much  as  he  did  of  —  well,  the  ropes. 


232  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"How,  ropes?"  David  asked. 

"Oh,  the  positions  of  things.  The  points  of  the  com- 
pass —  If  I  tell  you  to  go  up  stage,  you  don't  immediately 
come  down." 

That  was  the  work  of  the  little  theatre.  He  remembered 
the  ingenuous  direction,  on  the  back  of  the  fly-leaf  of  every 
play-book,  which  told  you  that  R  meant  Right  and  L  Left, 
and  that  the  Stage  was  supposed  to  face  the  Audience. 
It  had  all  begun  there. 

"Oh,  I  've  always  been  interested,"  he  said.  He  could 
n't  have  spoken  of  the  little  theatre.  "You  pick  up  things 
when  you  are." 

And  then  one  day  Tarpalin  stopped  calling  Jourdain 
'Jourdon,'  and  David,  though  Tarpalin  said  nothing,  and 
though,  in  a  cast  the  members  of  which  spoke  with  various 
accents,  there  were  of  course  plenty  of  others  beside  him- 
self who  said  'Jourdain,'  knew  instinctively  that  it  was  to 
him  and  not  to  these  others  that  a  rather  subtle  and  most 
unexpected  compliment  had  been  paid.  That  made  him 
extraordinarily  happy. 

And  so,  with  excitements  on  the  way,  things  moved 
toward  the  Night.  There  was  the  excitement  of  the  day 
when  the  Great  Hall  was  filled  with  hammerings,  and  the 
stage  was  being  erected.  David  watched  spell-bound.  It 
had  no  such  proscenium  as  that  of  his  own  miniature  stage. 
No  grouped  Neptune  and  Tritons,  blowing  shells  for 
horns,  surmounted  the  opening.  There  were  just  a  couple 
of  painted  Corinthian  columns,  some  stencilled  scroll- 
work of  an  Adamsy  pattern,  a  bunch  of  musical  instru- 
ments festooned  about  with  floating  ribands,  and,  at  each 
of  the  upper  corners,  a  mask — Tragedy  with  strained  eye- 
sockets  and  drooping  lips  (yet  the  whole  mouth  somehow 
four-square)  on  the  one  side,  and  Comedy,  with  the  same 
four-square  mouth,  yet  twisted  in  laughter,  on  the  other. 
Very  simple,  but  oddly  satisfying.  All  there  was  need  for 
seemed  to  be  there  in  visible  emblem  or  inspiring  sugges- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  233 

tion.  The  curtain  was  a  sort  of  Fragonard  picture,  such 
as  he  had  often  seen  in  the  galleries  that  he  had  been  taken 
to  abroad  when  he  was  a  little  boy.  He  liked  the  hooped 
ladies  and  the  satin-coated  periwigged  gallants.  They  too 
were  inspiring.  It  was  delightful  somehow,  when  the  cur- 
tain was  at  last  in  its  place,  to  see  it  roll  up  and  down  in  its 
frame.  He  must  needs  examine  the  pulleys,  and  master 
them,  as  though  it  were  he  and  not  the  exercised  prompter 
who  would  have  the  working  of  them.  Even  the  hammer- 
ing-in  of  the  nails  in  the  boards  of  the  platform  itself,  with 
its  gentle  rake,  had  fascinated  him.  How  surely  and  swift- 
ly each  nail,  taken  by  the  carpenters  from  a  mouthful  of 
nails,  went  home  under  the  deafening  hammerings!  His, 
we  may  be  sure,  was  the  first  foot  to  tread  the  boards 
when  the  rough  joists  were  covered.  And  the  footlights  — 
gas,  like  those  of  his  own  elaborate  model!  No  electric 
light  then;  gas  still  the  last  word  in  lighting.  What  a  hot 
glowing  row !  You  could  feel  the  warmth  of  them  on  your 
face  when  they  were  turned  up.  That,  too,  with  the  sort 
of  gulf  or  river  of  light  which  they  made,  to  divide  you 
from  the  audience  —  that,  too,  was  inspiring. 

There  had  been  the  day  of  the  measuring  when,  for  the 
guidance  of  the  costumiers,  your  height,  and  the  length  of 
your  limbs,  and  your  waist-  and  chest-  and  head-measure- 
ments, had  been  taken  and  set  down  against  the  name  of 
the  character  you  were  to  play.  David  had  proved  to  be 
nearly  an  inch  taller  than  he  had  thought.  Perhaps  that 
was  caused  by  excitement.  And  then  after  an  interval  had 
come  the  day  when  the  dress-baskets  arrived  —  neat  square 
wicker  trunks  with  'Abraham's'  painted  across  them,  and 
an  address  in  Covent  Garden.  David  promised  himself 
to  see  the  outside  of  Abraham's  shop,  when  the  holi- 
days came  and  he  should  be  back  in  London.  The  boxes 
stood  in  one  of  the  two  classrooms  which  had  been  vacated 
and  partly  dismantled  for  dressing-rooms.  Then  had  come 
the  unpacking  and  the  distributing.  None  of  the  gar- 
ments,   the    accurate   measuring  notwithstanding,   quite 


234  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

fitted  at  first.  On  one  boy,  clothes  would  hang  like  rags  on 
a  scarecrow;  on  another,  sleeves  would  leave  inches  of 
wrist  bare,  or  breeches  be  filled  to  bursting.  But  a  ward- 
robe woman  had  come  down  with  the  baskets,  and  under 
her  skilful  tackings  and  pinnings  and  lettings-out  —  these 
last,  however,  more  reluctant  than  any  takings-in  — 
miracles  happened. 

"Not  fit?  Go  on,  my  dear.  I've  seen  that  coat  on  a 
chest  like  a  cheese,  and  fit  that,  and  the  very  next  week  on 
a  little  manikin  of  a  fella  with  no  more  breast  to  him  than  a 
barn-door,  and  fit  'im  too.  You  don't  rightly  know  what  a 
coat 's  capable  of,  not  till  you  get  a  needle  in  your  'and  and 
a  mouthful  of  safety-pins.  Things  should  start  large, 
that's  all  I  say." 

Oddly  garbed  figures  buzzed  round  her. 

"  Yes,  one  at  a  time.  I  '11  take  you  next,  or  you.  I  'm  not 
particular.  Settle  it  amongst  you,  young  gentlemen. 
There,  that's  better.  Too  tight,  sir!  Not  it.  You  can 
breathe  right  enough  if  you  choose  to,  and  if  y'  can't,  why, 
il  fo  soofray,  as  they  say,  pour  ate  belle.  Well,  I  '11  give  you 
another  eighth  of  a  hinch.  That  do?"  She  would  take  a 
dozen  rapid  stitches  and  then  bite  her  thread.  "Now  the 
sleeves.  Too  long?  Well,  nothing  to  speak  of,  and  stand 
still,  dear,  for  goodness  gracious  sake,  or  you'll  'ave  my 
needle  in  y'r  arm,  and  then  you'll  holler,  /  know!  I'll 
shorten  the  ruffle.  I  'm  not  going  to  touch  the  velvet  for 
you,  sir,  nor  nobody  else." 

She  too  was  part  of  it.  The  magic  was  in  her,  too.  Her 
name  was  Vokins.  Miss  Vokins!  The  magic  of  that! 
London  was  written  all  over  her,  and  that  particular  bit  of 
London  (just  north  of  the  Strand)  which  clustered  round 
the  older  theatres.  She  was  plump  and  shabby,  had  a 
pleasant,  pert,  good-tempered  face,  rather  battered  by 
time,  and  a  little  —  not  to  any  disfiguring  extent  —  pitted 
by  smallpox.  It  was  her  hair  which  seemed  to  point  her 
connection,  direct  or  indirect,  with  the  concerns  of  the 
theatre.  This  —  she  had  heaps  of  it  —  was  towzled  rather 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  235 

than  'done,'  and  was  of  a  dingy  reddish  colour  darkening 
to  a  very  decided  brown  near  the  roots.  She  had  very 
shrewd  eyes  with  a  twinkle  in  them  and  —  yes,  it  was  that 
partly  —  a  look  of  Nell  Gwynne. 

All  the  time  that  she  worked  she  kept  up  a  running  flow 
of  rather  hoarse  talk  of  which  the  foregoing  is  but  a  sample. 
She  called  them  all  'dear,'  from  Tarpalin  himself  to  the 
smallest  super. 

"Stop  for  the  show?  Not  me.  I  've  got  to  be  in  Canter- 
bury this  time  to-morrow.  'Amlet  they're  doin'  there. 
Some  of  them  amachoors  'ave  n't  'alf  got  a  cheek.  I  only 
come  down  just  to  get  this  to  rights,  and  off  I  go  again. 
Worse  than  bein'  on  the  road  I  call  it.  Now  let 's  look  at 
you,  dear.  No  wonder  it 's  uncomfortable.  If  'e  'as  n't  got 
it  back  to  front!  Very  plain  you  wasn't  meant  to  wear 
petticoats.  Oh,  don't  worry  me  about  y'  wigs.  They're 
not  my  business.  Kressler's  man,  'e'll  see  about  them 
when  'e  comes  to  make  y'  up." 

At  last  it  was  David's  turn.  It  was  almost  a  disappoint- 
ment to  him  that  his  dress  needed  so  little  alteration. 

"Might  'a'  been  made  for  y'.  We'll  just  draw  y '  in,  sir, 
a  little  bit  more  at  the  waist.  Like  that,  see.  There,  a 
Picture  I  call  you.  Now,  into  the  next  room,  all  of  you, 
and  off  with  'em,  and  careful,  mind,  like  good  gentlemen, 
not  to  burst  the  tackings,  or  move  the  pins,  and  I  '11  'ave 
'em  all  ready  for  y'  in  an  hour." 

David  hoped  he  should  see  her  again.  He  seemed,  as 
never  before,  to  have  been  in  touch  with  the  real  thing. 
But  she  did  her  work  incredibly  quickly,  and  by  the  time 
they  reassembled  for  the  dress  rehearsal  she  was  gone. 

"Yes,  a  funny  old  thing,"  Tarpalin  said.  "She  comes 
every  year.  Good  old  sort,  is  n't  she?" 

David  would  n't  have  called  her  old.  As  he  saw  her  she 
was  even  comely.  He  had  seen  her  arrive  in  her  tight  yel- 
low ulster  with  the  amazing  lines  and  the  big  horn  buttons, 
which,  in  conjunction  with  the  tilted  beaver  hat,  made  her 
look  like  the  principal  boy  in  a  pantomime.    Dressed  so, 


236  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

and  with  the  addition  of  a  cane  under  her  arm,  she  would 
have  looked  ready  to  sing  Ladida  or  Tiddy-fol-lol,  or  what- 
ever just  then  was  the  song  of  the  moment.  Even  when 
she  had  peeled  off  the  ulster,  and  stood  displayed  in  her 
under  shabbiness  of  bursting  black  satin,  her  ample  bosom 
stuck  over  with  pins  and  threaded  and  unthreaded  needles, 
she  did  not  lose  a  certain  rafhsh  charm.  Nothing  so  alive 
as  Miss  Vokins  could  ever  have  seemed  old  to  David. 

She  ought  to  have  been  an  actress  herself  David  was 
thinking,  and  spoke  his  thought. 

"So  she  has,"  said  Tarpalin  —  "at  least  a  pro,  of  sorts. 
She  was  in  the  chorus  of  Madame  Angot  and  a  lot  of  other 
things.  She  's  understudied  too  — Serpolette  in  Les  Cloches 
de  Corneville  on  tour,  and  something  in  La  Mascotte.  She  told 
me  that  last  year.  She'll  talk  your  head  off  if  you  '11  let  her." 

David  opened  his  eyes  wide.  It  wanted  but  that  she 
should  have  been  born  in  Wych  Street  or  Holiwell  Street 
or  Drury  Lane.  These  names  had  'sounds'  for  him,  as  the 
Hoxton  Street,  formerly  Hoxton,  Old  Town,  and  the  Swan 
Street,  Minories,  and  the  Old  Street,  St.  Luke's,  of  the  little 
theatre.   Perhaps  she  even  had  been! 

"Then  why — ?"  he  began. 

"Oh,  lost  her  voice,"  said  Tarpalin  —  "after  an  illness 
she  says.  But  if  you  ask  me.  Anno  Domini." 

She  was  a  figure  of  tragedy  then.  He,  at  least,  would 
never  think  of  her  as  old. 

And  then,  Kressler's  man  arrived  with  his  make-up 
boxes,  his  paints  and  his  powders,  his  bistres  and  anti- 
monies, his  crayons  noirs  and  lining  pencils,  his  plaited 
ropes  of  crepe  hair,  his  spirit  gums,  his  powder  puffs  and 
hare's  feet ;  and  a  whole  new  world  of  wonder  and  enchant- 
ment was  opened  up  before  David's  eyes.  With  the  aid  of 
these  things  you  could  be  changed,  as  if  by  necromancy, 
into  almost  any  other  conceivable  or  inconceivable  type  of 
person.  The  whole  cast  of  your  features,  or  at  all  events  of 
their  expression,  could  be  altered,  with  almost,  if  not  quite, 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  237 

the  very  shape  of  some  of  them.  David  had  known  this,  of 
course,  but  it  was  none  the  less  wonderful  to  see  it  in  prac- 
tice. As  the  clothes,  under  the  adroit  fingers  of  Miss  Vo- 
kins,  were  made  to  fit  bodies,  so  faces,  under  the  hands  of 
Kressler's  man,  were  made  to  fit  parts.  Collingham,  quite 
an  ugly  boy  with  a  rather  pasty  face  and  pale  eyelashes, 
became  a  vision  of  feminine  loveliness.  Tarpalin  put  on 
thirty  years  or  so,  and  became  quite  unrecognisable,  as  he 
turned  veritably  into  the  redoubtable  Bourgeois  Gentil- 
homme. 

David,  with  the  others  waiting  their  turns,  watched,  fasci- 
nated. Eyelids  would  tremble  and  eyes  water,  perhaps,  as 
the  fine  black  or  blue  lines  were  applied  to  unaccustomed 
rims.  How  heavy  the  lines  were  sometimes  which,  pres- 
ently, in  the  glare  of  the  footlights,  were  to  show  them- 
selves as  no  more  than  looked  just  (artificially)  natural. 
How  eyes  shone  which  before  perhaps  had  been  lack-lustre! 

Some  of  the  more  experienced  of  the  players  gave  di- 
rections. Tarpalin  had  been  amongst  these.  He  had  his 
own  views  of  what  M.  Jourdain  should  look  like. 

"Not  so  much  rouge,  man,"  David  had  heard  him  pro- 
test.  "  I  don't  want  to  look  like  Punch  or  an  Aunt  Sally." 

The  rouge  had  been  toned  down  with  powder.  He  came 
back  while  the  next  boy  was  in  Kressler's  hands  to  com- 
plain that  it  wanted  toning  down  still  more.  Kressler's 
man,  with  no  time  as  he  said  to  argue,  applied  some  more 
powder  and  turned  back  to  the  boy  in  the  chair. 

"Let  'em  'ave  it  their  own  way,  I  say,"  he  murmured 
when  Tarpalin  was  gone.  "But  don't  let  'im  blame  me  if 
kind  friends  in  front  tell  'im  'e's  too  pale.  Nothing  like 
footlights  for  takin'  the  colour  out  of  you." 

Presently  it  was  David's  turn  and  he  took  the  chair. 
He  felt  as  he  leaned  his  head  back,  a  towel  round  his  neck, 
as  if  he  were  at  the  barber's,  or  perhaps  the  dentist's. 

"Let's  see,  sir,  you're  —  oh,  ah,  yes.  The  Tailor,  of 
course.  Have  you  any  views  of  your  own,  sir,  before  I  begin?" 

David  should  think  so,  indeed,  but  had  hardly  expected 


238  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

to  be  asked.   As  he  was,  however,  he  gave  them  sturdily. 

"That  is  n't  just  how  we  generally  make  up  the  part." 

"It's  the  way  I  see  it,"  David  said;  and  added,  "if  you 
don't  mind." 

Rather  to  his  surprise  —  or  perhaps  it  was  only  that  the 
man  from  Kressler's  had  not,  as  he  had  said,  time  to  argue? 
—  he  found  his  views  were  not  combatted. 

But  it  was  n't  indifference.  Tarpalin  had  taken  him  the 
wrong  way,  perhaps. 

The  man,  taciturn  hitherto,  began  to  talk. 

"I  like  y'  t'  'ave  views,  y'  know.  Shows  an  intelligent 
interest.  Within  reason,  that  is.  There's  some  amatures 
worries  y'  life  out.  Gets  their  'eads  swelled  quicker,  I've 
noticed,  than  any  mere  pro.  Some  of  'em  thinks  they  know 
better  than  anybody  else."  (Rub,  rub,  rub,  meanwhile;  it 
was  as  if  David  was  being  lathered  for  shaving.)  "Some  of 
these  'ere  society  ladies !  Want  to  look  pretty  when  they  're 
playing  character.  'Ow,  not  any  wrinkles!'  (Mrs.  Mala- 
prop,  if  you  please!)  Or,  'I  couldn't  look  like  that!  It 
does  n't  look  a  bit  nice.'  (Mrs.  Hardcastle,  maybe, — 
Tony  Lumpkin's  mother  —  you  know,  in  She  Stoops.  Or, 
'Gracious,  you've  made  me  look  fifty!'  (Mrs.  Candour,  I 
trouble  you,  in  The  School  for  Scandal!)  They  all  want  to 
be  ongenues.  I  'ave  n't  common  patience!  But  we  know  at 
once  what  we've  to  deal  with,  and  if  Lady  Macbeth  wants 
to  look  like  Juliet,  well,  let  'er,  I  say.  But  reasonable  views, 
that's  different.   Now,  sir,  look  up.  Quite  still,  please." 

David  did  n't  need  to  be  told.  He  could  keep  quite  still. 
What  mattered  a  little  tickling?   His  eyes  did  not  water. 

"And  of  course,  be  rights,  as  I  don't  forget  in  me  own 
mind,  we  don't  exist.  Not  prop'ly  we  don't.  Who  ever 
'eard  of  a  pro  letting  any  one  make  him  up  but  'imself? 
That 's  why  I  listen  when  there  is  views  and  reason.  For 
why  again?  Because  owner  of  said  views  ought,  in  point 
of  fact,  mind,  to  be  talking  to  'imself." 

"Could  my  eyebrows  be  made  a  little  higher?"  David 
suggested. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  239 

"I  see.  Wait  a  minute.  We'll  have  these  out.  More 
arched  like?  There,"  —  after  a  pause  during  which  he 
worked  busily,  —  "that  more  what  you  mean?" 

"That's  got  it." 

Curious  the  difference  it  made.  Curious,  too,  in  the 
light  of  his  inexperience,  that  the  difference  should  have 
been  exactly  what  he  had  hoped.  His  face  was  changing 
every  moment. 

Kressler's  man  read  his  thoughts. 

"Ah,  your  own  mother  would  n't  know  y ',  sir,  time  I  've 
done  with  y'." 

He  worked  on  for  some  minutes,  David  watching  him  in 
the  looking-glass.  But  his  words  had  sent  David's  thoughts 
flying  homewards.  He  wished  that  his  mother  were  coming 
like  other  boys'  mothers  to  see  him.  Neither  of  his  parents 
had  ever  been  down  yet  for  any  ceremonies  connected  with 
the  school.  In  his  present  frame  of  mind,  to  the  content- 
ment of  which  everything  lately  had  contributed,  he  be- 
lieved he  was  not  going  to  be  bad  in  his  small  part.  And  if 
he  was  n't  bad,  if  he  made  any  sort  of  little  success  in  it,  it 
would  help  toward  the  ultimate  telling.  But  no.  This  was 
but  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge.  He  would  get  better  parts 
than  this.  Time  enough.  His  mother  should  see  him  when 
there  was  something  to  see.  All  the  same  he  would  have 
liked  her  to  be  there  to  see  him  even  when  there  was  n't. 

Kressler's  man,  the  lines  all  in,  the  colour  applied,  gave 
his  face  its  final  light  dusting  of  powder. 

"  Now,  y '  wig,  sir."  He  had  tried  it  before,  but  taken  it 
off  to  have  freer  scope  for  his  ground  work.  "Sent  y'  a 
good  one,  I  was  glad  to  see.  Fits,  too,  as  if  it'd  been  made 
for  y'.  Wants  just  a  little  dressin',  though.  And  I'll  do 
that  before  to-morrow  night.  There  you  are,  sir,  and  'ow 
do  you  like  y'self?" 

"Jolly  good,  Sir  Thingamy  P.,"  said  the  next  boy. 
"  Jolly  good.  You  just  do  me  as  well  as  that,  Mr.  Kressler." 

"Ah,  there 's  faces  and  faces,"  said  the  man  from  Kress- 
ler's darkly. 


240  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

David,  looking  at  himself  in  the  long  glass  in  the  dressing- 
room  next  door,  was  quite  sure  that  he  did  wish  that  his 
mother  could  see  him.  She  would  most  certainly  not  have 
recognised  him. 

And  so  to  the  delicious  terrors  and  delights  of  the  Night, 
when  he  made  his  first  appearance  on  any  stage,  and,  if  his 
performance  was  not  such  as  to  set  the  Thames  on  fire,  of 
his  yet  quite  palpable  and  quite  significant  success.  Out- 
wardly nothing  particular  happened  —  the  part  was  not 
showy,  and  the  honours  naturally  went  to  the  bigger  roles. 

When  all  was  over,  and  he  stood  devouring  sandwiches 
and  drinking  claret-cup  with  the  rest  in  the  crowded  up- 
roarious dressing-room,  he  knew  that  a  beginning  had  been 
made,  indeed,  and  that  the  gates  of  his  terrestrial  paradise 
were  open  to  him  thenceforward. 

Tarpalin,  flushed  with  his  own  success,  clapped  him  on 
the  back,  nearly  making  him  choke:  "By  Jove,  young 
Penstephen,  next  year  we'll  show  them." 

There  it  was  in  words. 

"I  shall  get  other  parts?" 

"  I  should  jolly  well  think  so." 

There  were  groups  still  hanging  about  the  entrance  when 
at  last  David  came  out.  Still  under  the  spell  of  the  acting, 
he  likened  them  to  those  that  hung,  as  he  had  read,  about 
the  stage-doors  of  theatres  to  see  actors  emerge  in  mufti. 
He  saw  all  the  world  as  a  stage  that  night. 

"There's  Tarpalin,"  he  heard  some  one  say,  —  "who 
played  the  old  chap."   And  then  he  heard  his  own  name. 

A  figure  detached  itself  from  the  others  and  made  for 
him,  David. 

It  was  the  little  old  man  of  the  shop  in  the  back  street. 

"Hullo,"  David  said,  smiling. 

"  I  was  there,"  said  the  old  man. 

"Were  you?"  said  David. 

"You'd  never  guess  where.  In  the  organ  Icrft.  Ah,  I 
thought  that'd  surprise  you.  Your  head  porter's  brother  's 
a  friend  of  mine,  that's  how.   I  wanted  to  come.    Well!" 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  241 

David  waited. 

"You've  plenty  to  learn,  sir,  I  won't  say  that  you  have 
n't.  You  want  more  breadth  and  leisure;  you  want  to  hold 
things  like,  and  not  hurry  your  words.  You  want  practice 
and  experience.  But,  God  forgive  me,  if  it 's  this  I  've  been 
fostering  with  my  penny  plains  and  tuppence  coloureds, 
you  won't  stop,  I  venture  to  predict,  what  you've  begun 
to-night." 

"What?"  said  David,  not  quite  following. 

The  old  man  shook  his  head  ominously. 

"What  do  you  mean?"  said  David.   "Out  with  it." 

"Ah,  it'll  out  right  enough.  That's  the  trouble.  The 
trouble  for  your  anxious  relations,  I  mean.  Was  any  of 
them  here?" 

"No." 

"That's  a  pity,  and  yet  again  I  don't  know." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  said  David. 

"Why,  only  that  you've  got  something  that  perhaps 
they  won't  like  you  to  have.  It  was  a  fairly  good  show  all 
round.  I  've  seen  many  worse  —  here,  yes,  and  in  theatres 
too.  I  've  been  a  theatre-goer  all  my  life." 

"But  what  have  I  got?"  said  David.  His  eyes  were 
shining.  He  had  not  quite  got  all  his  make-up  off,  and 
there  was  still  a  shadow  round  his  lids  that  made  his  eyes 
even  consciously  burn. 

"I  don't  think  I've  ever  been  mistaken  yet,"  the  old 
man  said,  looking  at  him.  "Well,  sir,  my  congratulations 
for  what  they  may  be  worth." 

But  he  would  not  tell  him  quite  what  he  meant. 

"Something,"  he  said,  "that  not  one  of  the  others  had 
—  though  some  of  'em,  mind  you,  were  better  than  you  — 
something  that  not  one  in  twenty  has  —  no,  nor  fifty  for 
that  matter." 

"  I  have  n't  the  least  idea  what  you  mean,"  David  said; 
but  he  felt  suddenly  as  if  he  had  passed  an  examination. 


CHAPTER  X 

It  was  in  the  year  that  followed,  not  these  theatricals,  but 
the  next  (in  which,  a  year  older  and  more  than  a  year  big- 
ger, David  had  the  happiness  of  playing  Sebastian  in 
Twelfth  Night),  that  his  mother  was  torturing  herself  with 
the  second  of  her  fears.  She  had  been  watching  him  long 
before  that  for  signs  and  indications  of  that  knowledge 
that  might  be  supposed  to  be  his,  and  even,  as  we  have 
seen,  half  persuading  herself  that  she  had  found  them. 
But  she  was  wrong.  Surrounded  though  he  was  by  people 
who  might  know,  and  unlikely  as  it  thus  seemed  that  he 
could  escape  knowledge,  he  had  yet  so  far  escaped  it.  One 
or  other  of  the  masters  would  sometimes  look  at  him  with 
the  interest  which  his  peculiar  case  must  necessarily  have 
excited  in  the  minds  of  any  who  were  aware  of  it.  They, 
like  his  mother,  may  have  wondered  whether  he  knew. 
More  probably  they  would  have  supposed  that  he  did. 
But  it  was  not  in  any  case  for  them  to  enlighten  him.  His 
intimates  at  school  may  not  have  known.  It  appears  prob- 
able that  they  did  not.  Tact  is  not  a  conspicuous  attribute 
of  the  school-boy.  He  knew,  of  course,  that  there  was 
'something,'  and  that  this,  whatever  it  was,  was  connected 
in  some  way  with  his  father.  There  had  been  talk  in  the 
early  days.  But  talk  dies  down  sometimes  as  easily  as  it 
arises.  The  good-looking  boy,  whose  questions  had  started 
it,  had  left,  it  chanced,  in  David's  third  term.  David  could 
never  look  back  without  aversion  to  the  incident  in  which 
he  was  concerned,  and  the  uncomfortable  feeling  it  had 
left  behind  it ;  but  no  more  had  come  of  it  than  that  it  had 
entailed  for  him  a  sort  of  false  start  —  the  'way'  lost  to  him 
in  consequence  of  which  he  had  long  since  made  up  —  and  by 
degrees  there  had  come  to  be  whole  periods  when  he  could 
put  it  out  of  his  mind.  The  circumstances,  it  can  only  be 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  243 

supposed,  had  not  arisen  which  must  inevitably  have  led 
to  his  enUghtenment.  Up  to  his  sixteenth,  and  then  his 
seventeenth,  and  then  even  his  eighteenth  year,  he  was 
still  uninformed.  It  seemed  possible  that  he  would  attain 
to  manhood  in  ignorance  of  his  true  position. 

Thus  it  was  that,  though  the  constraint  which  his  mother 
feared  between  David  and  his  father  did  indeed  exist,  its 
presence  was  not  attributable  to  the  causes  which  she  so 
apprehensively  assigned  to  it.  It  arose  actually  out  of 
David's  father's  manner  toward  David. 

The  knowledge  of  the  injury,  all  unwitting,  or,  at  least, 
unintentioned,  as  it  m.ay  have  been,  that  he  had  done  to 
his  firstborn,  could  never,  we  may  be  sure,  have  been  quite 
absent  from  John  Penstephen's  consciousness.  Reason  as 
he  would,  it  must  have  been  there  at  the  back  of  his  mind, 
and  insensibly,  as  was  inevitable,  its  presence  expressed 
itself  in  an  uneasiness  —  a  dis-ease  rather  —  of  the  spirit 
which  acted  unconsciously  upon  his  manner,  and  reacted 
thus  upon  David.  Mary's  quite  different  uneasiness,  the 
existence  of  which  David  did  not  suspect  any  more  than  he 
suspected  that  of  his  father,  had  no  such  effect  upon  him. 
But  nothing  could  ever  have  come  between  David  and  his 
mother. 

He  knew  quite  well  that  he  did  not  talk  to  his  father. 
It  did  not  need  her  words  to  point  this  out  to  him.  But  he 
did  not  know  that  the  fault  was  not  wholly  his  own.  He 
thought,  indeed,  that  it  was.  He  ought,  he  believed,  to  be 
able  to  be  upon  the  same  terms  with  his  father  as  other 
boys  with  theirs.  But  somehow  he  could  not.  A  walk 
with  him  was  as  embarrassing  an  ordeal  to  David,  now,  as 
the  memorable  walk  at  Homburg,  and  left  him,  moreover, 
not,  as  that  walk  had  done,  with  a  feeling  that  a  closer 
communionship  had  been  established  between  them,  but 
with  a  sense  of  the  impossibility  that  any  such  commun- 
ionship should  be  lasting  or  in  any  degree  real.  It  was  a 
relief  to  him,  and  not  a  grief  (or  even  a  grievance),  that  his 
father  so  obviously  found  the  company  of  his  little  brother 


244  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

more  congenial.  There,  indeed,  was  their  one  point  of  con- 
tact. 

Yet  even  here  their  contact  was  not  quite  easy,  for  Da- 
vid's father,  knowing  what  he  knew,  must  assuredly  have 
felt  some  sort  of  compunction  when  he  saw  David's  affec- 
tion for  the  child  who  one  day  must  be  the  very  token  of 
the  wrong  that  had  been  done  him.  Mary,  in  the  depths  of 
her  heart,  had  a  conviction  which  she  would  not  acknow- 
ledge even  to  herself.  Was  John  happier  when  David  was 
at  school?  Was  that  even  why  David  had  been  sent  to 
school  at  all?  In  the  boy's  unusual  circumstances  the  en- 
gaging of  a  private  tutor  for  him  would  perhaps  have  been 
the  advisable,  maybe  even  the  obvious,  solution  of  the 
difficulties  which  had  presented  themselves  when  the 
question  of  his  education  had  been  considered.  She  had 
herself,  in  her  anxiety  for  his  well-being,  wished  that  David 
should  be  educated  at  home.  But  David's  father  had  over- 
ruled her.  Public-school  life  was  the  making  of  a  boy, 
knocked  the  corners  off  him,  gave  him  grit  and  pluck  and 
self-reliance  —  all  the  incontrovertible  arguments,  which, 
in  the  case  of  any  other  boy,  she  would  herself  have  used. 
But  in  David's  case  .  .  .  ?  All  the  more  in  the  case  of  Da- 
vid, he  might  have  reminded  her  (but  did  not),  who,  she 
knew  only  too  well,  —  or  thought  that  she  knew,  —  would 
need  all  the  grit  and  the  pluck  and  the  self-reliance  he 
could  command.  She  had  had  no  thought  then  that  he  had 
anything  but  David's  welfare  in  mind  —  nor  had  she  actu- 
ally now.  But,  that  she  should  have  to  combat  such 
thoughts  shewed,  not  only  how  sensitive  she  was  to  all  that 
affected  David,  but  also  how  far  she  and  John  had  travelled 
on  that  road  which  they  had  unconsciously  taken  on  the 
fateful  day  when  he  had  made  her  his  wife. 

David,  quite  unjealous  of  Johnny,  came,  then,  as  he  saw 
that  there  was  some  intangible  constraint  between  himself 
and  his  father,  even  where  they  were  so  patently  of  one 
accord,  to  wonder  whether  it  was  possible  that  his  father, 
where  Johnny  was  concerned,  could  be  jealous  of  him. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  245 

Surely  not.  Then  why,  here  also,  should  there  not  be  per- 
fect ease  between  them? 

So  he  tried  to  explain,  and,  as  a  thought  is  crystallised 
by  being  put  into  words,  so  the  idea  that  there  was  any- 
thing to  be  explained,  that  there  should  even  seem  to  be 
anything,  gave  to  phantom  nothings  substance.  The 
breach  which  Mary  feared  between  her  husband  and  her 
son  was  like  to  widen  without,  in  a  sense,  —  the  sense,  at 
least,  in  which  she  imagined  it,  —  having  any  existence  in 
fact.  She  saw  it  as  an  ominous  frightening  thing  because 
she  thought  that  she  knew  cause  for  it.  The  cause  which 
she  ascribed  to  it  was  not  there.  Yet  a  breach  was  daily 
becoming  real. 

But  though  Mary's  fears,  as  we  have  seen,  would  be 
lulled  from  time  to  time,  and  she  would  let  the  sheltered 
feeling  of  the  house  in  Cheyne  Walk  envelop  her,  so  that 
sometimes  she  was  almost  able  to  forget,  the  consciousness 
of  the  sword  that  hung  over  her  by  its  single  thread  never 
wholly  left  her.  And  though  David  did  not  know,  he  was 
becoming  more  and  more  aware  of  the  strangeness  of  the 
conditions  that  ruled  his  life.  Why  this  and  why  that,  he 
would  ask  himself.  Why,  for  example,  so  few  visitors? 
Mary,  for  reasons  that  her  son  knew  nothing  of,  had  gone 
no  more  to  Ettringham.  Where  David  and  Georgina  could 
not  go,  their  mother  would  not  go.  Nothing  in  the  nature  of 
an  explanation  had  passed  between  the  two  ladies.  Susan 
had  very  warmly  renewed  her  invitation  in  the  course  of 
the  year  which  followed  the  visit  at  which  we  assisted,  but 
Mary  made  regrets  and  excuses.  Then  came  a  period  dur- 
ing which  Susan  still  affectionately  invited  her.  Mary 
still  made  excuses.  John  urged  her  for  a  time.  Mary  had 
but  one  answer  to  anything  that  he  might  say:  Susan  knew 
why  she  could  not  go  to  Ettringham.  Mary,  however, 
urged  him,  in  turn,  to  go,  though  she  might  not.  She 
wished  him  to  go.  In  the  interests  of  Johnny  he  ought  to 
go.  There  was  every  reason,  she  felt  truly,  why  he  should 
go  and  none  why  he  should  not.  Betsy  was  sent  meanwhile 


246  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

with  Johnny;  and  presently  John  took  to  going  as  before. 
Relations  remained  quite  cordial  between  Susan  and 
Mary.  Letters,  which  were  even  genuinely  affectionate, 
were  written  by  one  to  the  other,  but  neither  put  what 
each  knew  (and  knew  that  the  other  knew)  into  words. 
The  letters  continued,  but  presently  the  invitations  ceased. 
The  last  took  the  form  of  a  standing  one :  Susan  could  well 
understand  that,  with  a  house  to  look  after  (Mary  did  not 
think  it  necessary  to  go  very  far  afield  for  her  excuses,  or 
even  to  vary  them!),  dear  Mary  must  find  it  difficult  to 
leave  home,  but,  whenever  she  felt  inclined  to  come  to 
Ettringham,  she  had  only  to  write,  and  that  she  would  be 
sure  of  a  welcome  she  did  not  need  to  be  told. 

So  the  dinner-parties  which  were  to  have  reinstated  her 
had  not  taken  place.  People  who  would  have  been  asked 
to  call  upon  her  were  not  asked  to  do  so,  and  Mary,  though 
she  fully  realised  what  she  was  doing,  would  not  have  had 
things  othenvise. 

Well,  David  had  no  wish  for  visitors.  No  young  boy  has. 
Visitors  as  visitors  are  to  him  but  persons  at  whose  ap- 
proach —  a  bell  heralding  it  —  you  make  yourself  scarce, 
and  for  whose  departure  —  a  bell,  but  a  different  one,  her- 
alding that  also  —  you  impatiently  wait.  Intruders,  oust- 
ing you  from  rooms  you  look  upon  as  your  own;  interrup- 
tions; bores  with  pretended  claims  upon  the  time  of  those 
whose  whole  attention  should  be  yours!  No,  the  young 
male  has  no  use  for  visitors.  But  as  David  grew  older,  he 
saw  that  his  parents  led  oddly  isolated  lives.  He  would 
wonder  sometimes  how  they  managed  to  fill  their  time. 
Not  so  much  his  mother,  perhaps,  who,  attaching  herself 
more  and  more  to  her  home  and  its  thousand  and  one  oc- 
cupations, was  always  busy.  But  his  father.  How  did  he 
content  himself?  Other  men  were  in  touch  with  their  kind 
all  day  long;  had  their  clubs;  a  dozen  recreations.  His 
father,  except  perhaps  when  he  went  away,  saw  few  people 
outside  his  own  circle.  How  had  this  curious  state  of  things 
arisen?  Why  did  it  continue? 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  247 

If  he  had  ever  asked  his  mother  outright  she  would  per- 
haps have  told  him.  He  had  become  too  much  accustomed 
to  accepting  life  as  it  presented  itself  to  him  to  ask?  It  was 
not  quite  that.  He  had  come  to  know  a  look  which  came 
into  his  mother's  eyes  when  questions  were  in  his  heart. 
It  came  into  them  —  a  sort  of  pleading  apprehension  — • 
before  his  questions  could  frame  themselves  into  words. 
There  was,  it  seemed,  even  in  his  close  intercourse  with 
her,  one  reservation;  one  barred  door;  one  tract  of  country 
which  his  feet  might  not  tread,  or  were  begged  not,  at 
least,  to  explore. 

But  though  he  did  not  wish  for  visitors,  he  did  wish  that 
he  could  have  brought  his  own  friends  to  the  house  freely. 
When  he  came  across  any  of  them  in  the  holidays,  he  never 
felt  quite  unhindered  in  pressing  upon  them,  or  even  prof- 
fering, the  informal  invitations  which  pass  as  a  matter  of 
course  between  schoolboys.  He  was  never  told  in  so  many 
words  not  to  do  so,  but,  though  he  knew  that  all  the  in- 
stincts and  inclinations  of  his  parents  were  hospitable,  he 
could  not  but  see  that  he  was  not  encouraged  to  ask  his 
school-fellows  to  Cheyne  Walk.  Difficult  indeed  to  ac- 
count for  this.  The  few  people  who  did  come  to  the  house, 
former  friends  of  his  father's  for  the  most  part,  and  the  one 
or  two  people  who  had  called,  were  made  welcome  at  all 
times.  David  thought  his  mother  was  never  more  delight- 
ful than  on  the  occasions  when  any  of  the  rare  callers 
came  to  luncheon  or  dinner.  When  the  conditions  were 
favourable  —  those  conditions  which  he  knew  nothing  of, 
but  guessed  at  vaguely  —  she  loved,  as  he  could  see,  to 
have  people  about  her.  She  blossomed  then  as  the  rose. 
It  was  abundantly  plain  at  such  times  that  she  was  not 
meant  by  nature  for  the  solitary  life  that  had  so  strangely 
been  forced  upon  her.  And  when  she  met  his  friends  her 
manner  was  so  exactly  right  with  them,  and  they  upon 
their  part  showed  so  unmistakeably  their  response  to  it, 
and  to  the  charm  which  David  was  so  proud  of  in  her,  that 
it  was  the  more  surprising  that  never  of  her  own  accord  did 


248  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

she  invite  them  to  his  home.  She  never  failed,  it  is  true, 
to  endorse  his  tentative  invitation  when  he  gave  it,  but 
always  qualified  it  with  the  stipulation  that  its  acceptance 
should  be  contingent  upon  the  consent  of  parents  or  guard- 
ians as  the  case  might  be.  David,  a  little  humiliated,  as 
she,  we  may  be  sure,  sorely  perceived,  pointed  out  some- 
times how  unnecessary  this  was.  Boys,  he  used  to  explain 
to  her  when  he  was  younger,  were  allowed,  to  a  greater  ex- 
tent than  she  supposed,  to  do  as  they  liked.  And  when,  as 
often  happened,  invitations  came  for  him,  there  were  hesi- 
tations, and  always  consultations  with  his  father,  before 
he  was  allowed,  if  he  was  allowed,  to  accept  them.  And 
always,  always,  behind  all  this,  there  was  somehow  the 
feeling  that  his  mother  could  not  help  it,  was  not  a  free 
agent  either  .  .  . 

Meanwhile  another  year  passed  after  that  which  had 
seen  him  play  Sebastian  in  the  school  theatricals,  and,  to 
his  further  pride  and  happiness,  he  stepped  into  leads  with 
young  Marlow  in  She  Stoops  to  Conquer.  That  was  a  proud 
moment  for  him  and  he  forgot  all  his  troubles.  He  worked 
day  and  night  at  his  part  and  justified  two  people's  belief 
in  him  —  Tarpalin's  which  had  given  him  the  part,  and 
his  old  friend's  from  the  shop.  But  the  old  man  from  the 
shop  shook  his  head  more  than  ever. 

"What  did  I  say?"  he  said.  "But  there's  some  meant 
for  one  thing  and  some  for  another.  What 's  it  got  to  do 
with  any  of  us?  We  're  as  we're  born,  I  suppose,  and  they 
won't  be  able  to  stop  you.  But  it 's  a  pity  you  're  not  poor, 
sir,  —  some  one  who 's  got  to." 

"Got  to  what?" 

"  Make  his  way.  Earn  his  living  like." 

"Oh,  I  have  to  do  that,"  said  David.  He  had  never  de- 
clared himself,  but  what  he  intended  to  do  with  his  life  was 
now,  it  may  be  seen,  an  understood  thing  between  them. 

"Not  in  the  way  I  mean,"  said  the  old  man.  "When 
shall  you  tell  them?" 

"I  don't  know  yet,"  said  David. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  249 

"When  are  they  coming  to  see  you?  What  I  can't  under- 
stand, if  you'll  pardon  the  liberty,  is  why  they  don't." 

It  was  what  David  could  not  understand  either. 

"Have  they  ever  seen  you?" 

David  shook  his  head. 

"What  I  mean  to  say  it  would  break  it  to  them  in  a 
manner  of  speaking.  It  isn't,  mind  you,  that  you  ought  to 
be  playing  parts  like  this  —  not  for  another  five  or  six 
years  you  oughtn't.  I'd  have  everybody  go  through  the 
mill.  Stock  Company.  General  Utility.  Anything,  every- 
thing—  see?  That's  how  most  of  the  big  ones  got  there. 
In  one  sense  the  part's  nothing.  For  me  I  could  judge  of 
you  just  as  well  in  y'  ten  o'  twenty  lines,  two  years  ago 
when  you  played  the  Tailor,  as  in  what  I  call  a  limelight 
part  like  Marlow.  For  me  this  only  endorses  what  I  thought 
then  and  proves  me  right.  But  for  most  people,  who  judge 
by  quantity  whatever  they  think,  it'd  seem  more  of  a  test 
like  of  what  you  can  do.  You've  made  a  success  with  it. 
As  they'll  have  to  know  sometime,  you  might  'a'  done 
worse  than  let  'em  see  y*  in  this  Marlow  of  yours." 

What  pleased  David  most  was  that  Tarpalin  was 
pleased.  Tarpalin  looked  upon  David  as  his  discovery. 

"I  knew  you  would,"  he  said. 

David  looked  upon  Tarpalin  as  the  agent  of  his  chance. 
But  for  Tarpalin  he  might  have  been  kicking  his  heels  out- 
side to  that  day. 

Tarpalin  said  suddenly,  "  I  wish  we  could  give  it  again 
—  at  home,  I  mean.  You  and  I  in  our  parts,  and  three  or 
four  of  the  others.  For  a  charity.  The  Hospital  probably. 
Would  you  come?" 

"Would  n't  I!"  said  David.  And  then  felt  annoyed  that 
he  should  have  to  qualify  this  with  a  reflective  "  If  I  could, 
that  is  —  if  I  find  I  could  get  away." 

"Oh,  you'd  be  able  to  do  that,  wouldn't  you,  if  you 
wanted  to?" 

"  I  should  certainly  want  to,"  David  said,  feeling,  almost 
as  he  spoke,  that  that  only  made  what  he  had  in  mind 


250  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

worse.  "I'd  love  to,"  he  said  then.  "I  should  think  I 
should  be  able." 

"I'll  write  to  you.  By  George,  it  would  be  fun.  We'd 
have  to  get  ladies  for  the  women's  parts,  of  course,  but  we 
could  easily  do  that." 

There  was  more  talk.  David  went  back  to  London  the 
next  day  happy  and  expectant.  A  week  passed;  the  eighth 
day  brought  Tarpalin's  letter.  The  thing,  it  seemed,  was 
as  good  as  arranged.  Most  of  the  others  would  come. 
Would  David?  A  note  from  Mrs.  Tarpalin  was  enclosed 
cordially  seconding  her  son's  invitation. 

Would  there  be  difficulties? 

He  sat  for  a  long  time  with  the  letters  in  his  hand.  As  he 
had  grown  older,  and  as  his  friends  had  grown  correspond- 
ingly older,  he  fancied  that  irksome  restrictions  had  been 
relaxed  somewhat.  Perhaps  his  parents  held  that  older 
boys  might,  indeed,  be  allowed  to  do  as  they  liked.  He  was 
seventeen  now,  rising  eighteen,  and  Tarpalin  a  couple  of 
years  older.  It  would  be  absurd  if  difficulties  were  raised. 
Perhaps  there  would  be  none.  After  much  thinking  he  de- 
termined that  if  his  mother  objected  he  would  not  oppose 
her;  but  that  if  it  proved  to  be  his  father  who  stood  in  the 
way  of  his  accepting  this  invitation,  he  would  at  least  de- 
mand his  reasons. 

He  took  the  letters  to  his  mother  and  laid  them  before 
her. 

"I  want  to  go,"  he  said. 

His  mother  read  Tarpalin's  letter  first.  She  had  not  met 
him,  but  she  knew  him  for  one  of  David's  heroes,  as,  by 
hearsay  at  least,  she  knew  most  of  his  friends,  from  all  the 
Jonathans  to  the  old  man  of  the  shop,  the  yearly  Miss  Vo- 
kins  of  Abraham's,  and  the  (equally  yearly)  man  from 
Kressler's.  When  she  had  read  Mrs.  Tarpalin's  note  she 
looked  up,  smiling. 

"Yes,  darling,  of  course  you  must  go,"  she  said. 

He  had  been  so  prepared  for  some  sort  of  demurring,  for 
at  least  a  referring  of  the  matter  to  his  father,  that  her  un- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  251 

hesitating  approval  took  him  aback.  She  saw  this  and  her 
eyes  filled  with  tears.  For,  as  we  may  guess,  though  he 
could  n't,  she,  not  knowing  whether  or  not  he  really 
'knew,'  could  n't  explain  to  him  that  it  was  because  the 
Tarpalins  were  people  of  the  world,  and  would  know  what 
Penstephen  it  was  that  they  were  asking,  that  he  might  go 
to  them  safely. 

He  always  remembered  the  night  before  he  started  for 
his  visit  to  the  Tarpalins.  It  was  to  be  what  might  be 
called  his  first  grown-up  visit.  He  had  developed  extraor- 
dinarily, as  even  he  himself  could  not  have  failed  to  be 
aware,  in  the  last  year  or  so.  He  had  had  new  evening 
clothes  made  during  the  winter  term  —  his  first  '  tails '  — 
and,  to  break  them  in,  and  to  the  eloquent  admiration  of 
Georgina  and  his  mother  (and  Betsy),  he  wore  them  that 
night.  Mary,  looking  at  him  in  them,  realised  suddenly, 
and  with  a  curious  stab  at  her  heart,  that  she  was  now  the 
mother  of  a  man.  He  was  as  tall  as  his  father,  and  had 
none  of  that  callow  gawkiness  that  so  often  characterises 
the  transition  stage  from  youth  to  young  manhood.  The 
lines  of  his  figure,  on  the  contrary,  in  the  extremely  well- 
fitting  clothes,  were  clean  and  definite,  and,  Mary  thought, 
quite  unusually  beautiful.  She,  like  Georgina,  could  not 
take  her  eyes  off  him.  Even  his  father  gave  him  his  ap- 
proval. 

"By  Jove,  David,"  he  said,  "you'll  have  to  give  me  an 
introduction  to  that  tailor  of  yours." 

David  coloured  with  pleasure,  Mary  saw,  as  he  laughed 
and  said,  "Are  they  all  right.  Father?" 

"Fit  you  like  a  glove,"  said  his  father. 

But  everything  was  right  that  night,  not  his  clothes 
only.  There  was  no  tension,  even  when,  after  Georgina 
and  his  mother  had  gone  to  bed,  he  and  his  father  were 
left  alone.  That,  he  supposed,  was  why  he  remembered. 
All  the  evening  he  was  conscious  of  it  —  the  feeling  of  well- 
being.    It  was  not  self-satisfaction  —  though  it  would  be 


252  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

vain  to  say  that  his  very  satisfying  new  appearance,  with 
its  immediate  and  successful  appeal  to  the  eye,  had  no 
part  in  it!  —  nor  was  it  just  the  pleasurable  excitement  of 
anticipation.  It  was  something  more  than  these,  though 
these  undoubtedly  contributed.  It  was  a  sort  of  realisation 
—  the  tension  between  him  and  his  father  being  tempo- 
rarily laid  —  of  his  home,  and  of  what,  under  everything 
that  disturbed  him,  this  home  of  his  meant  to  him.  A  veil 
seemed  to  be  lifted  from  his  eyes  and  his  eyes  allowed  to 
see.  All  that  they  lighted  upon  was  familiar.  The  warm 
lamplit  room,  the  mellow  brown  walls  of  which,  with  their 
pilasters  and  mouldings,  gave  his  mother  so  much  pleasure; 
the  hanging  glass  chandelier,  which  his  father  had  refused 
to  have  replaced  by  one  of  the  abominations  which  the  use 
of  gas  had  introduced  into  every  other  drawing-room;  the 
flower-piece  over  the  fireplace;  the  slender  steel  fire-irons 
in  which  the  flames  danced  in  reflection;  the  wine-colour  of 
the  curtains  and  of  the  brocade  which  covered  the  chairs 
and  stools  —  these  things,  taken  for  granted  generally  as 
mere  adjuncts  to  life,  or  parts  of  the  background  against 
which  it  was  lived,  showed  themselves  now  not  merely  as 
the  beautiful  things  that  they  were,  but,  like  the  little 
holland-covered  box  of  the  memories,  upstairs  in  the  lum- 
ber-room beside  the  outgrown  little  theatre  of  the  inspira- 
tions, things  in  life  itself,  interested  too  and  actively 
friendly.  It  was  as  if  he  suddenly  saw  them  all  to  have 
souls.  He  sat  by  the  fire,  his  book  on  his  knee,  dreaming 
happily. 

His  father  broke  in  on  his  musings. 

"How  are  you  off  for  money,  David?  Five  pounds  any 
good  to  you?" 

He  was  on  his  allowance  now.    Five  pounds  was  five 
pounds  —  and  a  good  deal  more  than  five  pounds !   This 
was  splendid  of  his  father! 
■     "All  right,  my  boy,  all  right." 

He  would  have  liked  to  say  something,  but,  conscious 
that  the  influences  of  the  moment  were  all  emotional  and 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  253 

therefore  not  quite  to  be  trusted,  he  contented  himself 
with  repeating  his  thanks.  He  folded  the  note  and  put  it 
into  his  pocket.  But  he  went  to  his  mother's  room  on  his 
way  to  his  own. 

Betsy  had  just  left  her  and  she  was  sitting  by  the  fire  in  a 
dressing-gown.  A  newspaper  was  in  her  hand.  She  had 
put  it  down  as  she  heard  his  knock  and  his  voice  asking  if 
he  might  come  in.  With  her  hair  in  the  thick  long  tail  into 
which  Betsy  always  plaited  it  for  the  night,  she  looked  — 
its  visible  greyness  notwithstanding  —  almost  like  a  girl. 

"Father 's  just  given  me  five  pounds,"  he  said. 

She  was  as  pleased,  he  saw,  as  he  was  himself. 

She  put  up  her  face  to  be  kissed. 

"Don't  spend  it  all  on  theatres,"  she  said,  smiling.  He 
knew  that  she  thought  he  went  to  the  play  too  often. 

But,  as  he  stooped  to  kiss  her,  he  saw  that  she  had  been 
reading  (again)  the  account  of  his  performance  in  the  re- 
cent theatricals. 

"Next  year,"  he  said,  "you'll  have  to  come  down  for 
them.   Why  would  n't  you,  this?" 

"Darling,  I  never  go  anywhere." 

"Well,  next  year  you  must.  I  shall  make  a  point  of  it. 
You've  never  come  down.  It  is  rather  beastly  of  you, 
Mummy,  isn't  it?" 

"I've  always  wanted  to  go  down." 

"  If  I  were  of  the  huffy  sort  I  should  be  rather  sore  about 
it." 

But  that  was  n't  what  he  had  come  in  to  say. 

"This  five  pounds,"  he  said,  and  hesitated  —  "this  five 
pounds  that  I  'm  going  to  spend  on  theatres  and  riotous 
living.  It 's  frightfully  decent  of  Father."  He  paused.  "  I 
wish  you'd  tell  him." 

"Why  don't  you  tell  him  yourself,  David?" 

"  I  have." 

He  kissed  her  again  and  said  good-night. 

"Tell  him  all  the  same,"  he  said. 

What  he  was  trying  to  let  her  know  —  the  influences  of 


254  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

the  evening  working  upon  him,  and  the  money  meaning 
really  far  less  as  money  than  as  evidence  of  his  father's 
thought  for  him  —  was  that  when  he  came  back  things 
should  be  different.  His  father,  if  the  fault  had  hitherto 
lain  with  David,  should  no  longer  be  outside  his  life.  He 
would  let  him  into  it  if  it  should  be  in  any  way  possible. 
"Good-night,"  he  said  again. 

The  next  day  he  went  down  to  the  Tarpalins. 


THE  THIRD   BOOK  OF 
DAVID 


BOOK  THE  THIRD 

CHAPTER  I 

Ten  minutes  after  David's  train  had  started  his  mother 
would  have  given  a  year  of  her  hfe  to  recall  him. 

For  the  pleasure  that  it  always  gave  her  to  be  with  him 
in  his  holidays,  she  had,  at  the  last  moment,  when  the  cab 
was  at  the  door,  suggested  half  in  play,  half  wistfully,  that 
she  should  see  him  off  at  Paddington. 

"Why  should  n't  I?  Shall  I?" 

David  jumped  at  the  proposal. 

"Get  your  things.  Quick,  Betsy,  Mother's  coat  and  hat. 
I  can  give  you  two  minutes." 

"I  can  be  ready  in  less  than  that,"  his  mother  cried, 
laughing,  and,  slipping  past  the  bulkier  Betsy,  sped  lightly 
upstairs  to  her  room.  She  had  her  hat  on  before  the  pant- 
ing Betsy  reached  her,  and  was  back  at  the  hall-door,  in 
her  coat  and  with  her  gloves  in  her  hand,  in  less  than  sixty 
seconds  all  told.  She,  too,  was  panting  a  little,  but  none 
the  worse  for  her  haste.  She  was  in  great  spirits  now,  and 
waved  a  laughing  hand  from  the  cab  to  the  group  on  the 
doorstep  as  she  and  David  drove  off.  Betsy  reappeared 
just  in  time  to  shake  a  remonstrant  finger,  and  David's 
mother  laughed  again. 

"How  foolish  I  am,  aren't  I,  David?"  (She  said, "Are 
n't  I.") 

"I  wish  you  were  coming  with  me,"  David  said. 

She  did  not  quite  wish  that,  though  she  did  wish,  per- 
haps, that  she  were  not  to  lose  two  precious  weeks  of  his 
time. 

David  was  in  great  spirits  too.  He  had  heard  again  from 
Tarpalin  that  morning.  The  theatre  in  the  neighbouring 
town  had  been  secured  for  the  performance. 

David,  like  the  war-horse  scenting  battle,  was  eager  and 
excited. 


258  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"All  this  acting,"  said  his  mother.  "We  shall  have  you 
going  on  the  stage." 

That  was  his  chance,  but  he  did  not  take  it. 

An  idea  struck  him. 

"Why  should  n't  you  come  down  for  the  night  —  to  an 
hotel?" 

It  was  a  great  idea.  Even  Mary  thought  it  an  idea.  She 
would  n't  promise,  but  they  played  with  it  all  the  way  to 
the  station. 

At  Paddington,  while  he  was  getting  his  ticket  and  seeing 
to  his  luggage,  Mary,  still  revolving  the  idea  in  her  mind, 
went  to  the  book-stall  and  bought  some  papers  for  him. 
As  there  was  not  too  much  time  to  spare,  she  asked  a 
porter  which  platform  the  train  started  from,  and  having 
learnt  its  number  made  her  way  to  it  to  wait  for  him  there. 
When  he  appeared  she  saw  that  he  also  held  a  sheaf  of 
papers. 

"Oh,  I'd  got  you  some,"  she  said,  a  little  disappointed, 
but  recovering  herself  at  once.  "Let  me  see  what  you  have 
there  and  if  you  have  any  of  the  same  ones,  I  '11  take  those 
back  for  your  father." 

By  chance  the  Morning  Post  only  was  represented  in 
duplicate,  and  the  copy  of  this  amongst  her  papers  she 
kept.  She  opened  it  absently  while  she  was  standing  at 
the  door  of  his  carriage,  and,  when  he  walked  a  few  yards 
up  the  platform  to  ask  a  question  of  the  guard,  she  turned 
it  inside  out  and  ran  her  eye  over  the  news.  He  came  back 
and  she  folded  the  paper  once  more,  but  without  turning  it 
back.  He  stood  there  talking  to  her,  and  she  thought  again 
how  much  a  man  he  looked,  and  had  a  momentary  pang  as 
she  knew  that  others  beside  herself  would  love  him,  and  as 
fleeting  a  misgiving  also  as  to  what  might  be  in  store  for 
him  even  now. 

But  it  was  not  a  day  for  misgivings.  A  clear  winter  sun- 
light penetrated  even  into  the  station.  One  of  those  rare 
days  had  dawned  that  morning  which  in  mid-winter  some- 
times breathe  a  promise  of  spring. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  259 

There  was  a  map  in  the  compartment,  and  David,  while 
he  was  waiting,  jumped  in  to  look  at  it.  Red  Alban,  the 
Tarpalins'  place,  was  in  Shropshire.  The  station  was  As- 
tonbury  where  he  was  to  be  met.  He  found  it  on  the  map. 
His  mother  said  Red  Alban  was  a  pretty  name  for  a  place. 

"Isn't  it?"  said  David.  "There's  a  White  Alban  too. 
It  belongs  to  Tarpalin's  father  as  well,  but  it 's  too  big  for 
them,  so  they  let  it." 

"  Don't  get  out  again,  darling.  The  guard 's  shutting  the 
doors." 

But  he  did  get  out  to  kiss  her. 

"You've  got  to  come,  mind.  You've  got  to  come."  He 
hesitated  for  a  moment  and  added,  "And  Father  too." 

"We'll  see,  darling.  We'll  think  about  it.  So  much  I 
will  promise  you." 

"No,  it's  not  to  be  a  question  of  thinking.  You're  to 
come,  do  you  hear.  Mummy?" 

"Yes,  darling,  I  hear." 

"I  shall  look  for  an  hotel." 

"No,  David.  No.  You  must  n't  do  that." 

"Why?"  he  asked  her. 

"It  might  be  supposed  —  by  your  friends,  you  know  — 
that  we  wanted  to  come,"  she  said  after  a  brief  pause. 

"You  do,"  he  said. 

"But  not  to  be  put  up  somewhere.  If  you  made  enquir- 
ies ..  .  Don't  you  see?  No,  you  can  let  me  know  just  the 
name  of  an  hotel.  If  we  go,  it  must  be  at  the  last  moment." 

"All  right,"  he  said.   "I  see.  So  long  as  you  do  come." 

He  got  back  into  the  carriage  and  leant  from  the  window. 
There  was  a  further  shutting  of  doors,  the  shrill  sound  of  a 
whistle. 

Mary  waved  to  him  till  he  was  out  of  sight  and  then 
turned  her  face  homewards.  It  was  a  pleasant  idea,  that  of 
going  down.  It  was  in  keeping  with  the  beautiful  day. 
How  beautiful  the  day  was!  She  would  like  to  walk,  she 
thought,  —  across  the  park,  at  any  rate. 

At  the  corner  of  Westbourne  Street  she  noticed  that  she 


26o  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

was  still  carrying  the  paper.  Did  she  want  it,  after  all? 
She  would  give  it  to  the  crossing-sweeper,  who,  with  his 
broom  for  the  mud  which  was  not  there  to  sweep,  was 
standing  in  the  roadway  a  few  yards  ahead  of  her.  Because, 
upon  this  beautiful  day  there  was  no  mud  to  make  his  oc- 
cupation profitable  (but  chiefly  because  David  had  looked 
so  good-looking  as  the  train  bore  him  away!),  she  thought 
that  she  would  give  the  man  sixpence  as  well  as  the  news- 
paper. She  opened  her  purse,  but  the  sixpence  she  wanted 
eluded  her  gloved  fingers.  She  fumbled  for  it  for  some 
moments  without  success,  so,  turning  the  contents  of  the 
purse  out  on  to  the  folded  paper,  she  separated  the  coin 
from  the  rest  which  she  put  back,  and  then  with  the  coin 
and  newspaper  was  advancing  toward  the  man  when  she 
stopped  suddenly,  a  name  on  her  lips. 

White  Alban! 

She  looked  round  her,  perplexed. 

Yes,  David  had  spoken  it.  Yes,  but  since,  since.  Nay, 
that  very  moment.   It  had  come  to  her  from  nowhere. 

There  was  not  any  one  near  her.  The  crossing-sweeper, 
all  unconscious  of  her  benevolent  intentions,  had  his  back 
to  her.  A  hansom  was  coming  up  the  street,  and  a  rail- 
way omnibus  piled  with  luggage  and  bound  probably  for 
the  station  she  had  just  left.  The  only  foot-passengers 
which  the  street  held  besides  herself  were  two  girls  on  the 
other  side  of  the  road,  and  a  postman  at  the  extreme  end 
of  it. 

"White  Alban,"  she  said  to  herself. 

And  then  her  eye  fell  upon  the  paper.  She  must  have 
read  the  name  in  it  unconsciously  as  she  held  it  under  her 
purse. 

No,  it  did  not  seem  to  be  there;  and  then  suddenly,  just 
as  before,  it  was  with  her  again.  And  then  again  she  lost  it, 
and  then  yet  again  it  was  there.  The  thing  happened  three 
times. 

Then  she  knew  where  she  had  seen  it.  It  was  on  the  very 
edge  of  one  of  the  folds.   Owing  to  the  way  in  which  the 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  261 

paper  was  folded  she  could  only  read  half  the  paragraph 
which  held  it : 

" — in  residence,"  she  read,  "at  White  Alban  in  Shrop- 
shire, which  she  has  rented  for  a  term  of  years  from 
Colonel  Tarpalin." 

She  unfolded  the  paper  to  read  the  whole  sentence.  It 
was  amongst  the  paragraphs  in  that  column  devoted  to 
chronicling  the  comings  and  goings  of  the  important  or  the 
merely  vulgar,  their  engagements,  or  the  breaking-off  of 
their  engagements,  their  illnesses  or  their  convalescences, 
and  the  like.  She  was  able  now  to  read  the  whole  sentence. 
The  missing  portion  of  it  sent  her  hand  to  her  mouth  in 
sudden  dismay,  and  her  thoughts  flying  tumultuously  to 
Brussels  and  Homburg. 

"The  Countess  of  Harbington,"  it  ran,  "has  returned 
from  Paris  and  is  now  in  residence  at  White  Alban  ..." 

It  was  like  a  hand  stretched  out  to  drag  the  escaping 
swimmer  down.  It  was  like  one  of  the  relentless  tele- 
graph posts  that  (long  long  ago  —  almost  it  seemed  in 
some  former  existence)  had  pulled  the  soaring  wires  earth- 
wards. Twice  this  woman  had  touched  her  life  with  her 
inexorable  stupid  malice.  No,  her  inexorable  malignant 
stupidity.  Brussels,  Homburg,  —  was  there  no  safety 
from  her?  The  third  time  the  blow  would  be  struck  at  her 
through  David  .  .  .  would  be  struck  at  David  himself. 
She  knew  it.  And  in  the  same  moment  she  knew  something 
else.  David  did  not  know.  He  did  not  know,  and  it  was 
for  this  that  he  had  been  kept  from  day  to  day,  from  month 
to  month,  from  year  to  year,  in  his  surprising  ignorance! 
Oh,  why,  why  had  she  not  told  him?  Knowledge  would 
not  have  saved  him,  she  knew  that.  But  it  would  have 
prepared  him.  The  blow  in  the  dark;  that  was  what  she 
had  always  feared  for  him;  and  that  —  oh,  she  knew  this 
if  in  all  her  life  she  had  never  known  anything  before !  — 
was  what  was  now  going  to  be  dealt  him. 

She  was  presently  in  the  park.  How  she  got  there  she 
could  hardly  have  told.  There  seemed  to  have  been  no  in- 


262  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

terval  of  time  between  the  houses  for  a  background  and 
then  the  curving  avenue  of  trees.  There  were  people  and 
there  were  carriages,  and  she  turned  back  and  into  the 
greater  quiet  of  Kensington  Gardens.  The  wide  stretch  of 
grass  on  that  side  of  the  western  end  of  the  Serpentine  was 
deserted  save  by  a  few  children  whose  presence  she  scarcely 
noticed.  She  walked  about  aimlessly.  The  sunlight  was 
everywhere.  The  grass  was  quite  dry.  She  became  con- 
scious of  an  overpowering  lassitude,  and  looked  about  her 
for  a  chair.  There  were  no  chairs  near  her. 

She  overcame  her  fatigue  and  walked  round  by  the  end 
of  the  lake  to  the  beautiful  glades  beyond.  Here  she  found 
a  secluded  chair  and  sat  down. 

Her  mind  began  to  work  again.  But  it  is  significant  that 
she  did  not  try  to  persuade  herself  that  her  fears  were 
groundless  or  foolish.  She  knew  that  they  were  neither. 
She  knew,  also,  that  nothing  could  be  done.  If  she  could 
have  recalled  David,  she  would  have  done  so.  A  telegram 
might  have  caught  him  somewhere  on  his  way,  but  it  was  a 
telegram  which  could  not  be  sent.  If  she  could  have  inter- 
cepted him  herself,  that  would  have  been  different.  She 
journeyed  after  him  in  imagination,  appearing  before  his 
startled  eyes  on  some  platform.  'David,  you  must  come 
back  with  me.  Or  you  must  hear  what  I  have  to  tell  you, 
and  then  go  on  if  you  like.  You  must  judge  for  yourself, 
but  you  must  just  know,  so  that  things  can't  be  sprung 
upon  you.'  How  would  he  take  it?  If  she  could  but  hope 
that  he  would  still  go!  Yes,  that,  at  the  back  of  everything, 
was  her  one  hope.  It  was  more  than  that,  if  she  could  have 
realised  it.  It  was  her  unacknowledged  belief.  She  did  not 
know,  as  we  do,  that,  conscious  of  his  capacity  for  unhap- 
piness,  conscious  too  of  its  value  to  him  as  an  artist,  he 
cherished  it,  but  did  not  intend  that  it  should  conquer  him 
as  a  man.  She  did  not  know  that,  like  the  oyster,  he 
meant  to  turn  the  grits  in  his  life  into  pearls  —  that  the 
nature,  with  which  she  herself  perhaps  had  partly  endowed 
him,  did  this  for  him,  or  at  least  helped  him  to  do  it  for 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  263 

himself.  But  in  all  her  dread  and  her  misery  she  must  have 
had  some  sort  of  inkling  that  it  was  thus  with  him.  If, 
then,  she  could  have  seen  him!  Or  if  she  could  but  have 
seen  the  few  lines  in  the  paper  but  one  quarter  of  an  hour 
earlier !  Then  all  would  have  been  easy. 

"David,  here  is  something  that  makes  it  necessary  that 
I  should  tell  you,  now,  this  moment,  what  I  have  put  ofT 
and  put  off  and  put  off  telling  you." 

Too  late.  Nor  could  she  write  it  to  him.  Imagine  the 
effect  of  such  a  letter  ...  in  a  strange  house,  amongst 
strangers,  amongst  people  gathered  together  for  amuse- 
ment! That  would  be,  indeed,  to  spring  the  knowledge 
upon  him.  It  was  not  in  human  endurance  to  bear  the 
shock  of  so  sudden  a  revelation.  He  would  want  to  hide 
himself  in  the  first  staggering  moments.  They  would  send 
up  to  his  room,  perhaps,  where  in  fancy  she  could  see  him 
lying  on  his  bed,  his  face  in  his  hands  or  turned  to  the  wall, 
to  ask  why  he  did  not  come  down,  whether  he  was  ill, 
whether  anything  was  the  matter.  She  could  hear  his  muf- 
fled answer  telling  them  that  he  was  all  right,  not  ill,  that 
he  would  be  down  presently.  And  the  half-hours  would  go 
by  and  he  would  not  be  able  to  go  down ;  or  he  would  go 
down  and  know  that  they  were  all  looking  at  him,  and  he 
would  try  to  appear  just  as  usual,  as  if  nothing  had  hap- 
pened. 

No,  not  to  be  thought  of,  such  a  letter.  She  was  power- 
less. Things  must  take  their  course. 

An  hour  later  she  was  still  sitting  in  Kensington  Gar- 
dens. The  sunshine  had  not  faltered.  The  west  was  red- 
dening now,  and  the  shadows  of  the  trees  were  growing 
very  long.  The  shadow  of  the  man  who  was  coming  toward 
her  now  to  collect  the  penny  for  her  chair  reached  her  many 
moments  before  he  did.  She  still  held  the  sixpence  which 
she  had  meant  to  give  to  the  crossing-sweeper.  She  paid 
for  her  chair  with  it,  and,  that  he  might  not  embarrass  her 
with  a  handful  of  coppers,  the  man  sought  in  his  leathern 


264  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

wallet  for  a  threepenny  bit.  His  action,  as  he  fumbled  for 
it,  reminded  her  of  her  own  in  the  pursuit  of  the  sixpence 
she  had  just  given  him,  and  she  lived  again  through  the 
moment  of  her  recent  experience.  She  sat  then  with  the 
ticket  in  her  hand,  looking  after  him  and  his  long  retreating 
shadow.  The  fingers  of  one  of  his  hands  were  extended  as 
his  arm  hung  down,  and  the  shadows  of  them  as  they 
passed  over  a  smooth  bare  patch  a  few  yards  in  front  of  her, 
were  long  as  walking-sticks.  A  giant  skeleton  hand  was 
silhouetted  grotesquely  before  her.  She  watched  how  it 
dipped  and  swung  as  the  longer  trail  of  which  it  was  part 
undulated  over  the  unevenness  of  the  ground.  And  as  he 
stood  beside  her  the  man  was  rather  a  short  man,  she 
remembered,  and  the  fingers  that  had  fumbled  for  the  three- 
penny bit  were  short,  too,  and  blunt. 

It  was  these  observations  more  than  any  sense  of  the 
passage  of  time  that  recalled  her  to  a  realisation  of  the 
hour. 

Even  then  she  did  not  move  at  once.  There  were  not 
many  people  about  now  —  a  few  lovers,  or  couples  rather 
in  attitudes  of  love,  on  the  chairs  which  stood,  always  in 
pairs,  under  the  trees.  The  nurses  and  the  children  had  all 
cleared  away  from  the  glades  and  open  spaces.  The  west 
grew  momentarily  redder.  There  was  going  to  be  a  won- 
derful sunset,  the  faint  mists  of  London  helping.  From  a 
rift  in  the  clouds  low  on  the  horizon  came  sudden  rays. 

And  then,  at  a  moment  when  she  had  not  even  been 
conscious  of  her  suffering,  or  that  she  was  suffering,  she 
was  crying,  crying  desperately;  a  very  storm  of  tears 
sweeping  over  her.  Her  sobs  shook  her.  They  were  like 
the  sobs  of  a  child.  She  struggled  for  her  handkerchief  and 
pressed  it  over  her  mouth  to  stifle  them. 

Wave  after  wave  broke  over  her.  The  pent  emotions  of 
years  were  finding  outlet  in  the  tears  that  gushed  from  her 
eyes,  and  the  sobs  that  seemed  wrung  from  her  very  heart. 
She  had  pushed  up  her  veil,  but  it  slipped  down  and  was 
soon  limp  and  sodden.   For  some  minutes  she  wept  thus, 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  265 

and  then,  like  a  storm  in  the  tropics,  as  suddenly  as  it  had 
come  upon  her,  the  tempest  passed. 

She  took  off  her  gloves  and  unfastened  her  veil,  which, 
after  a  moment's  hesitation,  she  threw  away.  There  was 
happily  a  second  handkerchief  in  the  pocket  of  her  coat, 
and  she  dried  her  eyes  and  her  face.  She  looked  about  her 
quickly  but  no  one  was  watching  her.  The  lovers,  intent 
on  their  dallyings,  had  not  observed  her  and  were  too  far 
off  to  have  heard  her.  She  felt  lighter  now,  extraordinarily 
relieved.  All  her  sorrows  had  found  expression  in  her 
tears,  all  her  love.  Not  for  David  only  had  she  wept,  but 
for  herself  and  Georgina  and  Johnny  and  John  —  oh,  yes, 
and  especially  John.  He  had  failed  her  in  some  strange 
way  that  she  did  not  understand.  Her  pity  for  him  was 
the  more  poignant.  She  saw  him  somehow  standing  quite 
alone.  .  .  . 

With  the  sunset  the  air  had  grown  cold.  There  was  a 
sound  overhead,  and  a  couple  of  wild  ducks,  their  necks 
outstretched,  passed  across  the  shining  face  of  the  sun. 
They  wheeled  eastwards,  then  back  toward  the  Serpen- 
tine. There  had  been  sparrows  and  some  starlings  and  a 
few  pigeons  on  the  grass  searching  for  food.  These  were  all 
gone  now,  but  the  tree  under  which  she  sat  was  alive  with 
chirpings  and  twitterings.  Soon  it  would  be  night.  She 
shivered  a  little  and  rose  to  her  feet.  She  felt  stiff  and 
chilled.  Through  the  gardens  sounded  the  cry  of  the  park- 
keepers. 

"All  out.  All  out.  All  out"  ...  a  long-drawn  cry. 

It  came  from  different  parts  of  the  gardens  —  a  sort  of 
Angelus.  The  couples  rose.  A  straggling  procession  of 
people  who  had  not  seemed  to  be  there  trailed  toward  the 
gates. 


CHAPTER  II 

David  meanwhile  sped  toward  Red  Alban  and  whatever 
might  be  in  store  for  him  there.  He  had  the  compartment 
to  himself  and  was  very  comfortably  disposed  in  a  corner 
of  it,  with  his  rug  over  his  knees  and  his  newspapers  about 
him.  As  his  mother  and  he  between  them  had  seen  to  it 
that  he  should  have  so  many  newspapers,  he  did  little  more 
than  glance  over  the  contents  of  any  of  them.  Thus  he  did 
not  see  the  paragraph  which  had  so  greatly  disturbed  his 
mother. 

He  looked  out  of  the  window  and  wondered,  with  the 
pleasant  anticipation  of  pleasure,  who  would  be  at  Red 
Alban,  and  who  would  play  the  parts  which  would  not  be 
filled  by  the  boys  who  had  played  them  before.  He  was  at 
an  age  when  a  visit  is  an  adventure,  and  the  meeting  of 
people  an  excitement. 

He  lifted  his  dressing-case  down  from  the  rack,  pres- 
ently, and  putting  it  on  the  seat  beside  him,  opened  it  and 
took  from  it  a  small  drab-coloured  paper  book.  It  was  out 
of  shape  from  much  handling,  and  the  pages  had  a  tend- 
ency to  curl.  It  was  his  scored  and  pencilled  copy  of  the 
play.  He  went  through  the  whole  of  his  part  —  hearing  it 
to  himself  by  reading  his  cues  and  covering  up  Marlow's 
lines  with  an  envelope.  Doubtful  lines,  and  lines  his  own 
interpretation  of  which  did  not  quite  satisfy  him,  he  re- 
peated several  times.  He  was  practically  word-perfect,  he 
found,  but  there  was  still  plenty  to  work  at.  He  looked 
forward  to  the  rehearsals. 

Then  the  windows  claimed  him  again.  The  winter  land- 
scapes, he  thought,  were  very  delightful.  The  bareness  of 
the  trees  and  of  the  hedges  had  its  part  in  the  charm  of 
them.  The  trees  shewed  their  delicate  tracery  against  the 
clear  sky.  The  hedgerows  were  brown,  with  a  warm  reddish 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  267 

tinge,  like  dark  hair  that  in  certain  lights  shows  itself  to  be 
not  dark  at  all,  but  touched  with  copper.  Ploughed  fields 
were  peculiarly  beautiful.  Rooks  were  busily  at  work  in 
the  furrows,  and  from  time  to  time  he  saw  plover.  He  im- 
agined the  cawings  and  the  cryings  which  he  could  not 
hear.  Smoke  from  cottage  chimneys  was  richly  blue.  The 
day  was  full  of  colour.  Sometimes  a  little  church  would 
whisk  by.  Sometimes  it  was  a  horse  and  cart  on  a  road 
below  him  which  would  hold  his  attention  for  as  long  as  it 
was  in  sight;  or  cattle  or  horses  in  a  field.  Some  children  in 
a  garden  waved  to  the  train.  Everything  looked  happy  in 
the  sunshine. 

By  degrees  the  sun  sank  in  the  heavens,  and  David, 
presently,  was  watching  the  sunset  which  witnessed  his 
mother's  tears  in  Kensington  Gardens.  By  the  time  he 
reached  Birmingham  the  evening  had  closed  in. 

At  Birmingham  he  got  out  to  stretch  his  legs  and  get 
himself  some  tea.  The  boy  with  the  tea  was  some  distance 
down  the  platform,  and  when  David,  a  cup  and  saucer  in 
one  hand  and  a  bun  in  the  other,  came  back  to  his  com- 
partment he  found  it  no  longer  empty.  He  had  left  nothing 
to  shew  particularly  which  seat  he  had  been  occupying, 
for  his  belongings  had  been  strewn  rather  impartially 
about  the  cushions,  so  perhaps  he  could  not  reasonably 
complain  that  his  seat  had  been  taken.  A  young  man  sat 
in  it.  But  surely  the  least  the  newcomer  could  have  done, 
David  thought,  was  to  ask  now  whether  the  place  he  had 
appropriated  had  been  free.  This  he  did  not  do. 

David,  after  the  briefest  pause,  took  the  corresponding 
seat  at  the  other  end  of  the  compartment.  He  finished  his 
tea  first  and  then  collected  his  belongings  about  him.  As 
his  dressing-case  was  in  the  rack  at  the  stranger's  end,  the 
significance  of  a  new  disposal  of  the  things  which  the  car- 
riage had  held  must  have  been  quite  apparent.  The 
stranger,  however,  made  no  sign  of  observing  it. 

The  short  twilight  had  waned  in  the  ten  minutes  or  so 
of  the  Birmingham  stop.  When  the  train  left  the  lights  of 


268  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

the  station,  it  ran  into  a  dusk  which  soon  became  darkness. 
But  this,  half  dusk,  half  darkness,  made  the  conditions 
exactly  right  for  the  sight  of  the  Black  Country  through 
which  they  were  now  passing,  and,  in  the  abounding  inter- 
est of  the  views  from  the  windows,  his  indignation  began 
to  cool.  After  all,  what  was  it  to  him  that  a  fellow-travel- 
ler, some  one  he  had  never  seen  before  and  in  all  proba- 
bility would  never  see  again,  should  be  ill-mannered?  Rib- 
ands of  flame  flapped  upwards  from  a  hundred  scattered 
buildings.  The  crown  of  fire  on  some  of  the  chimneys  was 
like  a  flower.  There  was  one  like  a  water-lily  of  which  the 
heart  was  red  heat  and  every  petal  a  flame.  Some  of  the 
furnaces  sent  up  a  single  tongue  of  gold.  Some,  so  rhyth- 
mic was  the  leaping  of  their  fires,  seemed  to  breathe. 

The  train  sped  too  quickly  for  David  now.  What  re- 
mained of  the  sunset  was  like  a  perpetuation  of  these  mid- 
land fires.  By  day  this  strange  country  shewed  its  ugli- 
ness, he  knew.  In  reality  it  was  a  great  wound  in  the 
earth's  fair  surface,  a  spreading  sore  which  ate  into  the 
green  of  the  country-side,  fouling  its  waters  and  killing  its 
trees.  But  evening  transfigured  it;  night  gave  it  mystery. 
Unsightly  mounds  of  slag  put  on  beauty  as  a  garment. 
The  dingiest  shed  took  fitful  colour  from  throbbing  fires. 
There  were  black  spaces  here  and  there,  like  the  unf  a thomed 
spaces  in  the  heavens  between  stars  and  where  no  stars 
are  visible.  And  then,  beyond  these,  fires;  and  beyond  these 
again,  fires;  and  the  glowings  of  fires  reflected  on  the  skies. 

The  train  ran  into  Wolverhampton,  and  the  Black 
Country  was  passed. 

David  became  aware  once  more  of  his  fellow-traveller. 
The  young  man  was  on  his  feet  now,  leaning  out  of  the 
carriage  window,  blocking  the  door  and  the  approach  to 
the  door.  David  did  not,  as  it  happened,  want  to  get  out, 
but  if  he  had  wished  to,  or  even  to  look  on  to  the  platform, 
he  could  not  have  done  so  without  asking  him  to  move.  A 
complete  disregard  of  the  possible  inclinations  of  any  one 
but  himself  marked  his  attitude. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  269 

It  was  again  nothing,  but  again  David  was  conscious 
of  annoyance,  and  of  something  more  than  annoyance. 
Every  Hne  of  the  back  that  was  presented  to  him  was  arro- 
gant, insolent,  an  assertion  or  denial.  It  was  a  well-made 
back  too,  and  encased  in  a  well-made  coat.  A  man,  in  such 
circumstances  as  the  coat  seemed  to  suggest  for  its  wearer, 
had  no  excuse  for  such  manners.  With  rising  indignation 
and  a  tapping  foot,  David  considered  whether  he  should 
not  cross  the  floor  and  oblige  him  to  make  way.  If  there 
were  time,  he  thought,  he  would  even  like  to  get  into  an- 
other carriage.  No,  this  would  be  to  pay  him  too  much 
attention.  But  he  would  make  him  move.  He  rose  to  his 
feet.  At  the  same  moment  the  guard's  whistle  sounded. 

At  least  at  Shrewsbury,  where  he  had  to  change,  he 
would  be  rid  of  him.  He  had  seldom,  he  thought,  taken 
such  a  dislike  to  any  one  —  certainly  not  to  any  one  with 
whom  he  had  not  exchanged  a  word.  And  then  as  before 
he  gradually  cooled  down.  It  was  ridiculous  to  let  his  feel- 
ings disturb  him,  absurd  to  allow  the  behaviour  of  a 
stranger  to  affect  him  at  all. 

It  was  growing  chilly  now.  He  turned  up  the  collar  of 
his  ulster,  pulled  his  rug  up  about  him  and  closed  his  eyes. 
He  would  soon  be  at  Shrewsbury. 

He  dozed  as  far,  perhaps,  as  Wellington;  woke  finally  to 
the  sight  of  the  dimly  lit  Severn  below  him.  They  were 
running  into  Shrewsbury.  His  fellow-traveller,  it  seemed, 
was  alighting  here  also.  As  he  was  next  to  the  door  it  fol- 
lowed that  he  got  the  first  porter,  and  David  had  to  wait 
till  he  could  find  another.  But  so  glad  was  he  to  think  that 
he  had  seen  the  last  of  some  one  so  fundamentally  uncon- 
genial to  him,  that  he  welcomed  rather  than  regretted  the 
delay. 

He  managed  after  a  little  difficulty  to  get  hold  of  a 
porter,  and  in  due  time  found  himself  in  the  train  for  As- 
tonbury.  Three  quarters  of  an  hour  brought  him  to  that 
station.  , 


270  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

It  had  been  market-day  at  the  Httle  Shropshire  town, 
and,  though  the  bulk  of  the  farmers  and  the  country  peo- 
ple generally  that  a  market-day  brings  together,  had  been 
cleared  off  by  earlier  trains,  there  was  still  a  considerable 
bustle  about  the  platform.  Women,  with  baskets  on  their 
knees  or  at  their  feet,  sat  on  the  benches,  or,  with  their  bas- 
kets on  their  arms,  pushed  their  way  toward  the  incoming 
train.  Children  dragged  at  skirts  or  were  dragged  at  by 
flurried  hands.  Gaitered  men,  in  weather-beaten  coats  and 
rain-stained  or  sun-browned  felt  hats,  talked  in  groups, 
and  were  jocose  or  surly  or  indifferent  according  to  their 
several  natures.  A  few  were  a  little  drunk. 

Into  the  midst  of  all  this  David  stepped,  and  a  few  min- 
utes later  was  following  a  footman  to  the  brougham  which 
was  waiting  to  take  him  to  Red  Alban.  It  was  a  relief  to 
him  to  find  that  he  was  to  be  its  only  occupant,  for  at  the 
luggage  van  he  had  come  face  to  face  with  his  late  fellow- 
traveller.  The  trifling  coincidence,  suggesting  as  it  did  the 
further  probability  of  their  being  bound  for  the  same  desti- 
nation, had  caused  him  a  discomfort,  which,  for  the  mo- 
ment or  two  of  its  duration,  was  quite  out  of  proportion 
to  its  importance.  Actually  it  had  no  importance.  As  the 
brougham  drove  away  he  saw  our  unmannered  friend  get 
into  a  closed  landau  of  old-fashioned  but  rather  imposing 
appearance,  which  had  evidently  been  waiting  to  receive 
him,  and  which  took,  David  was  glad  to  observe,  a  differ- 
ent direction  from  that  in  which  he  himself  was  being 
driven. 

He  tried,  but  not  quite  successfully,  to  put  the  whole 
incident  from  him. 

The  night  in  spite  of  a  clear  sky  was  dark,  or  looked  dark 
from  the  inside  of  the  brougham.  There  were  stars  he  saw 
when  he  let  down  a  window,  but  there  was  no  moon.  He 
watched  the  lights  of  the  carriage  lamps  dancing  on  the 
hedges  that  seemed  to  stream  by  unendingly,  and  the 
gently  swaying  backs  —  a  slim  back  and  a  stout  back  — 
of  the  servants  on  the  box  in  their  grey  liveries.  The  road 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  271 

presently  climbed  a  steep  hill  which  midway  brought  the 
horse  to  a  walk,  and  then  the  hedges  no  longer  seemed 
fluid,  but  jogged  past  the  windows  in  short  jerks.  At  what 
David  would  have  thought  the  steepest  part  of  the  hill,  the 
horse  quickened  his  pace  to  the  trot  into  which  he  broke 
automatically  a  few  moments  later  as  they  reached  the  top 
of  it.  There  was  a  mile  or  so  of  even  ground  then,  and  then 
another  dip  and  a  plunge  into  what  looked  like  a  dense 
forest,  but  was  indeed  but  a  narrow  band  of  the  Red  Alban 
woods.  Through  thick  darkness  then,  always  in  the  circum- 
scribed circle  of  light  which  here  brought  the  trunks  of 
trees  one  by  one  into  rapid  sight  and  one  by  one  discarded 
them  for  others,  and  then  a  sudden  emergence  into  open 
country  once  more.  A  straggle  of  houses  presently  —  the 
outskirts  evidently  of  a  village ;  lights,  more  houses,  a  shop 
or  two,  a  church,  the  village  itself  —  Red  Alban,  as  David 
heard  the  next  day;  and  then  a  long  stone  wall,  iron 
gates  which  admitted  to  a  short  gravelled  drive,  and  the 
brougham  had  drawn  up  before  a  pillared  and  porticoed 
doorway. 

The  footman  had  hardly  descended  and  rung  the  bell, 
before  the  door  had  opened,  and  Tarpalin  was  out  on  the 
steps  giving  David  welcome. 

"Now  we  shall  be  all  right,"  he  said;  "we've  got  our 
leading  man!" 

He  led  David  in,  his  arm  affectionately  round  his  shoul- 
ders. There  was  a  sort  of  outer  hall,  where  they  were  met  by 
the  butler  and  another  footman  on  their  way  to  the  door 
(in  the  opening  of  which  Tarpalin  had  forestalled  them), 
and  where  David  was  relieved  by  them  of  his  hat  and  coat, 
while  Tarpalin  waited. 

"Now,  come  along,"  said  TarpaHn,  his  hand  on  David's 
arm.  "Jove,  I  am  glad  to  see  you.  What  sort  of  a  jour- 
ney? All  right?  It 's  the  devil's  own  nuisance  having  to 
change  at  Shrewsbury,  though!  I  say,  I  was  sorry  not  to 
meet  you!  I  was  just  ready  to  start  when  old  Harrowby 
who  's  lending  the  theatre  was  announced,  and  I  had  to 


272  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

stop  and  hear  him  jaw  for  half  an  hour  to  keep  him  in  good 
temper.   He  's  only  just  gone." 

He  led  the  way  across  another  hall,  where  a  big  fire  was 
burning  on  an  open  hearth,  to  a  room  at  the  farther  end  of 
it.  Here  some  half-dozen  persons  were  assembled. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  gave  David  a  very  friendly  fat  hand  and 
drew  him  to  the  fire.  She  was  like  her  son  in  appearance, 
but  had  run  to  good-natured,  and  perhaps  a  little  indolent, 
flesh.  She  was  to  play  Mrs.  Hardcastle  in  the  forthcoming 
play,  and  had  her  part  on  the  sofa  beside  her,  as  David 
saw,  when  she  made  a  place  for  him  there.  Her  three  chins, 
he  could  not  help  thinking,  would  be  invaluable  to  her  as 
the  mother  of  Tony  Lumpkin.  She  introduced  David  to  a 
girl  with  pretty  twinkling  eyes  who  sat  nursing  a  sleeping 
kitten. 

"This  is  Miss  Davenport  who  plays  Miss  Neville  for  us. 
She  has  played  it  before,  so  we  were  as  lucky  to  be  able  to 
get  her  as  to  be  able  to  get  you.  Mr.  Penstephen  —  Miss 
Davenport.  There  will  be  some  fresh  tea  in  a  minute." 

David  bowed  to  Miss  Davenport,  and  then  turned  back 
to  his  hostess  to  say  he  had  had  tea. 

"But  at  Birmingham,"  she  said.  "As  if  that  counted, 
and  besides,  here  it  is." 

Two  or  three  of  his  school-fellows  were  in  the  room,  and 
these  now  came  forward  and  greeted  him.  The  party 
seemed  all  to  be  young. 

Tarpalin  brought  him  his  cup,  and  the  boys,  and  even 
Miss  Davenport,  who  was  near  the  tea-table,  plied  him 
with  food.  It  was  all  very  friendly  and  natural.  David  was 
conscious  of  a  delightful  quality  in  the  atmosphere  of  the 
room.  He  was  at  home  in  it  at  once. 

From  a  door  the  other  side  of  it  there  came  in  now  an 
elderly  man,  whom  David  guessed  rightly  to  be  Tarpalin's 
father. 

"I  thought  I  heard  the  carriage  going  round  to  the 
stables.  Ah,  yes.  You  have  come,  Mr.  Penstephen.  Don't 
get  up.  Go  on  with  your  tea.  I  'm  very  glad  to  see  you." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  273 

He  held  a  billiard  cue,  and  said  no  he  had  n't  finished 
his  game,  in  answer  to  an  enquiry  from  his  wife,  and,  to 
David,  after  a  word  or  two  more  of  cordial  welcome,  that 
he  must  go  back  now  that  he  had  shaken  his  hand. 

"Theo  's  beating  me  into  fits,"  he  said  to  his  son  over  his 
shoulder,  as  he  turned  to  go. 

"She  would,"  said  Tarpalin. 

David  was  asked  If  he  played,  but  he  said  he  did  not. 

"That 's  right,"  Tarpalin  said,  "you'll  be  much  too  busy 
for  billiards.  We  're  going  to  work  you  all  like  niggers  now 
we've  got  you.  Are  n't  we.  Mother?" 

"I  shall  never  know  my  words,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin 
plaintively. 

"Who  plays  Tony?"  David  asked,  —  " Welwyn?" 

"Welwyn.  He's  in  the  billiard-room.  Watching  my 
father." 

"Watching  Theo,"  said  his  mother. 

"Theo,"  said  Tarpalin  to  David,  "is  Miss  Nevern  — 
your  Kate  Hardcastle." 

The  boys  and  even  Mrs.  Tarpalin  looked  at  him  as  if  to 
say,  'Wait  till  you  see  her!'  Tarpalin,  with  his  'your  Kate 
Hardcastle,'  had  spoken  as  if  David  was  in  luck. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  now  said,  with  a  smile  for  herself  as  much 
as  for  her  son,  "I  don't  think,  in  all  the  years  I've  been 
married  to  him,  I've  ever,  before,  known  your  father  to 
play  billiards  in  the  afternoon." 

"Theo,"  said  Miss  Davenport,  "would  make  any  one 
play  anything,  anywhere,  at  any  hour." 

The  boys  all  grinned. 

"You  haven't  met  her  yet,  I  think?"  Mrs.  Tarpalin 
said  to  David. 

He  shook  his  head. 

"If  I  had  n't  promised  myself  that  you  should  take  me 
in  to  dinner  to-night,"  she  said,  "you  should  take  her,  Mr. 
Penstephen.  I  '11  put  her  on  your  other  side." 

"Father  would  never  forgive  you." 

"That 's  true,"  she  said,  —  "nor  Mr.  Penstephen  either, 


274  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

for  that  matter.  Gracious,  and  to-morrow  night  we  shall 
have  Eric  here!" 

It  was  Tarpalin  who  grinned  then. 

"He'll  want  to  sit  on  both  sides  of  her,"  he  said. 

The  talk  branched  off  to  other  topics;  market-day  at 
Astonbury,  which  always  made  the  station  unbearable;  a 
local  light  railway,  which  had  been  mooted  for  years,  and 
which  Mrs.  Tarpalin  wished  for  and  Colonel  Tarpalin  did 
not;  the  sunset  that  day  which  had  been  so  beautiful  that 
they  had  all  walked  to  the  top  of  the  hill  to  see  it. 

Did  Mr.  Penstephen  know  Shropshire? 

He  did  not. 

Then  they  must  show  as  much  as  they  could  of  it  while 
he  was  there. 

Tarpalin  said,  "  I  won't  have  you  taking  him  away  from 
rehearsals." 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  said,  "And  I  won't  have  you  working  him 
to  death.  All  work  and  no  play  —  " 

"Frank  wants  it  to  be  all  play,"  said  Miss  Davenport. 

"All  jolly  fine,"  said  Tarpalin.  "We've  exactly  a  fort- 
night.   You  try  producing  She  Stoops  in  a  fortnight!" 

So  they  chattered. 

The  servants  came  in  to  clear  away  the  tea-things,  and 
the  butler  bowed  over  David  to  ask  for  his  keys. 

Soon  after  this  a  general  move  was  made.  Some  of  the 
party  adjourned  to  the  billiard-room,  and  Tarpalin  went 
up  with  David  to  shew  him  his  bedroom.  Mrs.  Tarpalin 
going  to  her  own  room,  accompanied  them  as  far  as  the  top 
of  the  stairs. 

"Does  Mr.  Penstephen  know  Eric?" 

David  appealed  to  Tarpalin. 

"Do  I?"  he  asked. 

"Eric  Dunstable.   Do  you?" 

David  shook  his  head. 

"He  's  Theo  Nevern's  cousin.  He  plays  Hastings  for  us. 
He's  staying  at  White  Alban.  You'll  meet  him  to-mor- 
row." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  275 

"How  he  ever  came  to  be  Theo's  cousin!"  Tarpalin's 
mother  said. 

"I  know  you  hate  him,"  said  Tarpahn.  "But  what 
could  I  do?  Perman  could  n't  have  played  Hastings  here. 
He  looked  too  young  even  in  the  school  show  —  did  n't  he, 
Penstephen?  And  Eric  was  coming  to  White  Alban.  Any- 
way, he  's  not  in  the  house  this  time,  so  what  does  it  mat- 
ter?" 

"Yes,  he's  not  in  the  house,"  said  Mrs. Tarpalin.  She 
turned  to  David.  "Of  course  we've  all  known  him  since  he 
was  a  boy.  (Dinner  's  at  eight.  I  do  hope  your  room  's 
comfortable.  I  've  put  you  near  Frank.  You  '11  ask  him  for 
anything  you  want,  won't  you.)  I  never  liked  him  and  I 
never  shall,  but  he  's  a  very  good  actor  and  I  dislike  his 
aunt  still  more.  You'll  know  what  I  mean  when  you  see 
him." 

Thus  David  had  his  attention  fixed,  as  it  were  for  him, 
upon  two  people  whom  he  did  not  yet  know.  Frank  Tar- 
palin shewing  him  to  his  room  continued  to  talk  of  one  of 
them.  At  the  door  of  the  room  it  was  seen  that  a  servant 
was  still  unpacking,  so  they  went  into  Tarpalin's  room  till 
he  should  have  done,  and  here  Tarpalin  talked  still  more. 

"I'd  have  given  anything  to  keep  him  out  of  it.  But 
there  's  Theo.  She  wanted  him,  —  most  perversely,  for  she 
does  n't  really  like  him.  And  there  's  that  horrid  old  woman 
at  White  Alban  who  would  have  been  offended  if  we'd 
offended  him,  and  we  want  her  silly  patronage  for  the  sake 
of  the  Hospital." 

"Who  's  the  horrid  old  woman?  "  asked  David. 

"Oh,  Lady  Harbington,"  said  Tarpahn. 

Something  stirred  in  David  faintly,  something  fast  asleep 
—  waking? 

And  then,  like  his  mother,  though  without  at  once  know- 
ing why,  he  in  turn  was  whisked  back  across  the  years  to 
Brussels  and  to  Homburg.  The  sense  of  being  lifted  from  a 
warm  bed  in  the  middle  of  the  night  was  certainly  present 
to  him  for  a  moment;  of  being  washed  and  dressed  by 


276  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

candle-light  (soap  in  your  eyes,  fingers  straining  at  your 
buttons !) ;  of  the  unusualness  —  the  unnaturalness  —  of 
activities  very  early  in  the  morning  —  a  yawny  feeling; 
the  taste  and  scent  of  raw  air  on  the  way  to  a  station;  the 
smell  of  a  cold  early  train,  so  entirely  different  from  the 
smell  of  a  later  warmed  one.  He  had  lived  through  these 
happenings  at  some  time  —  ages  and  ages  ago  —  and  was 
living  through  them  again.  Was  n't  there  some  one  nice  — 
a  waiter,  yes,  a  waiter  —  who  had  waved  to  him  from  be- 
hind the  curtain  of  a  window?  He  saw  his  father's  face, 
grim  —  wearing  the  unapproachable  look;  his  mother's? 
—  oh,  the  look  that  he  used  to  know;  Betsy's;  and  he  saw, 
of  course,  the  hoUand-covered  box;  a  chicken  tied  up  with 
ribands  —  remembered  the  taste  of  chicken  which  you 
*ate  in  your  fingers,'  dipping  the  bone,  which  you  were 
allowed  to  '  pick '  (because  a  meal  in  a  train  was  so  different 
from  a  meal  at  a  table  where  you  had  knives  and  forks), 
into  your  own  particular  little  portion  of  salt  on  a  bit  of 
paper  for  a  plate.  Why  did  he  suddenly  remember  these 
things?  And,  as  suddenly,  not  exactly  Katinka,  but  the 
going  of  Katinka,  his  marred  birthday  party,  the  mask, 
even,  thrust  into  a  drawer;  and  the  sight  of  two  ladies  who 
sat  on  a  seat  in  the  Kurgarten  at  Homburg  and  argued 
.  .  .  and  stopped  arguing  .  .  .? 

Ten  years  since  he  had  heard  the  name.  But  he  remem- 
bered .  .  .  remembered,  though  he  had  not  understood. 


CHAPTER  III 

Something  akin  to  excitement  held  David  after  Tarpalin 
had  shewn  him  to  his  quarters  and  left  him.  In  the 
beautifully  proportioned  room,  with  the  Queen  Anne 
furniture  which  he  appreciated  without  wholly  perceiving, 
he  dressed  quickly  as  if  he  had  some  reason  for  wishing  to 
be  down  early.  Under  the  skilful  arrangement  of  his  be- 
longings by  the  servant  who  had  unpacked  for  him,  every- 
thing was  exactly  where  his  hand  fell  upon  it  most  readily. 
No  time  had  to  be  wasted  in  hunting  for  this  or  for  that,  or 
even  in  changing  what  had  been  put  out  for  him  for  what 
had  not.  What  had  been  put  out  was  in  every  instance 
what  he  wanted.  So  it  came  that  of  the  men  of  the  party 
he  was  down  first.  Afterwards,  it  was  as  if  he  must  have 
known  that,  by  the  fire  in  the  hall,  he  would  find  reason 
alike  for  his  haste  and  his  excitement. 

A  girl  was  standing  by  the  great  open  hearth.  She 
turned  at  the  sound  of  his  steps  on  the  polished  boards. 
He  did  not  know  what  other  girls  there  might  be  in  the 
house,  but  he  knew  at  once  as  he  approached  her  that  this 
was  Miss  Nevern. 

"You're  Mr.  Penstephen,"  she  said  to  him.  "I  should 
have  known  you  from  Frank's  description." 

David  said  boyishly  that  he  would  like  to  know  what 
Frank  had  said. 

"Ah,  no,"  said  Miss  Nevern. 

She  looked  very  straightly  at  you.  That  was  his  first 
impression  of  her. 

He  did  not  say,  'You  're  Miss  Nevern.'  There  was  no 
need.  He  came  over  to  her  and  they  looked  at  each  other, 
the  light  of  the  flames  dancing  on  their  faces. 

("Theo,"  he  heard  Miss  Davenport  saying,  "would 
make  any  one  play  anything,  anywhere,  at  any  hour.") 


278  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

What  was  it  about  her?  Not  beauty  —  or  not  beauty 
only.  Miss  Davenport  was  much  better-looking.  But  it 
was  not  of  Miss  Davenport  that  any  one  would  have  said 
what  Miss  Davenport  had  said  of  her;  and  it  was  not  of 
Miss  Davenport  that  Tarpalin  would  have  said  that 
'  Eric,'  whoever  he  was,  —  or  any  one  else,  —  would  want 
to  sit  on  both  sides  of  her.  Miss  Nevern  was  twenty,  per- 
haps, but  years  of  victory  over  every  one  lay  behind  her; 
years  of  such  victories  were  before  her.  She  was  an  in- 
nocent mischievous  Ninon  de  I'Enclos,  who  would  have 
lovers  at  eighty. 

We  are  not  to  suppose  that  David  at  seventeen-and-a- 
half  was  going  to  be  her  lover.  Love,  as  love  is  understood, 
does  not  come  into  this  part  of  David's  life  at  all.  Friend- 
ships, as  romantic  as  you  please,  had  claimed  him  long 
since,  and  would  claim  him  again.  But  love  —  time  enough 
for  love  in  the  years  still  before  him. 

If,  however,  we  have  been  able  to  realise  anything  of  the 
appeal  of  his  looks  at  this  period,  of  his  strong  slim  young 
body  with  its  mixture  of  boyishness  and  strength,  —  slen- 
derness  and  muscle,  —  his  strong-looking  throat  on  which 
the  head  was  set  so  attractively,  the  rather  melancholy 
eyes  which  his  mother  had  given  him,  and  the  boyish 
laugh  which  was  his  own,  we  shall  understand  that  to  so 
experienced,  albeit  so  young,  a  natural  huntress  as  the 
curious  girl  he  was  admiring  so  frankly,  he  stood  for  very 
desirable  quarry  indeed. 

Theo  Nevern  was  of  those  who  are  born  to  play  havoc 
with  hearts.  She  had  roguish  eyes  and  a  plaintive  little 
mouth.  The  eyes  invited,  provoked,  challenged;  the 
mouth,  with  the  tremulous  lips  of  a  child,  was  a  plea  for 
compassion. 

They  continued  to  look  at  each  other,  as  the  light  of  the 
flames,  dancing  like  the  lights  of  the  furnaces,  continued  to 
play  on  their  young  faces.  At  the  back  of  David's  mind 
was  the  knowledge  that  in  a  minute  or  two  some  one  else 
would  come  down  and  the  spell  be  broken.  In  some  strange 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  279 

way  he  knew  that,  though  he  was  not  nor  ever  would  be 
in  love  with  her,  these  were  perhaps  the  most  wonderful 
moments  that  he  had  known  in  his  life. 

What  was  it  about  her? 

It  seemed  quite  natural  and  not  even  impertinent  to 
hear  himself  putting  his  thought  into  words. 

She  looked  at  him  oddly  then. 

"You,  too?"  she  said  and  shook  her  head.  The  roguish- 
ness  went  out  of  her  eyes.  It  was  as  if  it  was  with  her  pa- 
thetic mouth  only  that  she  spoke. 

What  she  said  next  was  really  extraordinary. 

"Eric  comes  to-morrow,"  she  said.  She  did  not  even 
say  'Mr.  Dunstable.'  She  must  have  been  speaking  to 
herself. 

"  I  've  heard  of  him  also,"  David  said. 

"What  have  you  heard  of  him?  " 

It  was  David  now  who  said  "Ah,  no." 

"They  don't  like  him  here,"  she  said  —  "even  Mrs. 
Tarpalin  who  likes  everybody." 

"But  you  do?" 

"He's  not  like  any  one  else." 

It  may  have  been  just  for  the  sake  of  the  sound  of  the 
words  themselves  that  David  said  — 

"Then  he  must  be  like  just  one  other  person." 

" Eric  like  me?  You  don't  know  him  —  or  do  you?" 

David  shook  his  head. 

"I  had  never  heard  of  him  till  this  evening." 

"You  would  n't  have  said  that  if  you  had." 

There  was  a  little  pause. 

"He's  one  of  the  most  disagreeable  people  I  know.  He 
makes  one  angry.  One  could  strike  him  —  be  glad  to  see 
him  struck  —  in  the  face.  His  face  is  so"  —  she  hesitated 
for  a  word  —  "so  insolent.  It 's  that  that  is  so  desperately 
—  no,  I  won't  say  it." 

But  she  had  said  it.  It  was  extraordinary  that  she 
should  have  said  it  —  more  extraordinary  than  either  of 
them  knew  then. 


28o  DAVID   PENSTEPHEN 

"It 's  because  of  that,  you  mean?" 

She  nodded  slowly. 

"While  everybody  else  .  .  .!" 

She  appeared  to  think  this  over,  but  finally  nodded 
again. 

"We  make  each  other  furious,"  she  said. 

Some  realisation  of  the  extraordinariness  of  what  she 
was  saying  seemed  to  come  to  her,  for  she  gave  a  little  ex- 
clamation and  said  abruptly,  "How  do  we  come  to  be  talk- 
ing like  this?  How  did  we  begin?" 

"I  can't  remember,"  said  David. 

He  could  not.  It  all  only  seemed  quite  natural. 

"  I  believe  — "  he  began  and  broke  off. 

She  looked  at  him,  waiting. 

"He's  at  White  Alban,  isn't  he?  —  Mr.  Dunstable,  I 
mean." 

"Yes." 

"That's  near  here,  somewhere?" 

"About  five  miles." 

"Was  he  arriving  to-day?" 

"Yes.  Why?" 

"So  that's  Mr.  Dunstable!  We  were  in  the  same  train. 
We  travelled  part  of  the  way  in  the  same  carriage.  So 
that's—" 

"I  should  think  it  is  most  probable,"  said  Miss  Nevern. 
"  If  he  struck  you  as  being  extremely  repellent  I  should  say 
it  was  certainly  Eric.  Anyway,  you'll  know  to-morrow. 
But  not  till  to-morrow." 

Her  eyes,  the  roguishness  coming  into  them  again,  held 
him  and  released  him.  Some  of  the  others  were  coming, 
and  the  spell  was  broken.  Not  till  afterwards  did  David 
realise  how  curious  the  experience  had  been. 

It  was  Frank  Tarpalin  who  came  into  the  hall  now  with 
two  of  the  boys.    . 

"  I  went  to  your  room  to  look  for  you,"  he  said  to  David, 
"  but  I  saw  you  had  come  down.  You  know  Miss  Nevern?  " 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  281 

"We  introduced  ourselves,"  said  she. 

The  gong  was  sounded  somewhere  nearby  as  she  spoke, 
and  the  hands  of  all  went  to  their  ears. 

"I  ought,"  Frank  said,  "to  make  you  all  work  after 
dinner.  We  could  take  the  scenes  that  don't  want  every- 
body." 

But  "No,  no,"  said  Miss  Nevern.  "We  start  work  to- 
morrow. Don't  we,  Mr.  Penstephen?  We  face  realities 
then.   For  to-night  we  enjoy  ourselves." 

"If  there  's  one  thing  certain  it  is  that  you'll  do  as  you 
like,  Theo  dear,"  Frank  said.  "Your  stage-manager  may 
make  up  his  mind  to  that,  may  n't  he?" 

He  put  his  hand  lightly  on  hers.  David,  who  was  really 
fond  of  his  friend,  was  yet  conscious,  to  his  own  surprise, 
of  a  momentary  but  quite  appreciable  twinge  of  pain. 
Jealousy  of  any  sort  was  so  foreign  to  his  nature  that  the 
incident,  trifling  as  it  was,  seemed  to  expose  him  uncom- 
promisingly to  himself,  and  even,  though  surely  inconse- 
quently,  to  throw  a  reflected  light  upon  Miss  Nevern  —  a 
light,  nevertheless,  by  which  he  saw  her  for  a  brief  instant 
very  clearly.  He  stooped  and  picking  up  a  bit  of  wood 
thrust  it  into  the  heart  of  the  fire.  When  he  looked  up 
Frank's  hand  had  been  withdrawn.  David  felt  penitent 
and  very  much  ashamed  of  himself.  He  was  not  happy 
again  till  Frank's  arm  was  linked  with  his. 

But  he  had  realised  Miss  Nevern.  You  could  not  be  un- 
aware of  her  any  more  than  you  could  help  liking  her.  If 
you  had  been  in  love  with  her  you  would  still  have  liked 
her.  A  more  curious  thing  was,  perhaps,  that  the  other 
girls  in  the  house  liked  her  —  there  were  two,  it  ap- 
peared, besides  Miss  Davenport;  a  Miss  Aylmer,  Lucy, 
and  a  Miss  Blake,  Emma,  who  now  joined  the  group  by 
the  fire,  and  clustered,  with  Miss  Davenport  who  came  in 
a  moment  later,  round  the  all-eclipsing  Theo.  He  listened 
to  them  now. 
-  .."You've  done  your  hair  differently,  Theo." 


282  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"So  she  has." 

"Let  me  see." 

"And  me." 

"Theo!" 

"Like  it?" 

"You  look  heavenly.  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  look, Theo's  done 
her  hair  the  new  way.  Does  n't  she  look  an  angel?" 

"Theo  always  looks  nice,"  Mrs.  Tarpalin  said,  and 
brought  sensibleness  back  to  the  hearth.  But  David  knew 
that  she,  too,  was  devoted  to  Miss  Nevern. 

All  through  dinner  he  was  conscious  of  her.  He  was 
separated  from  her  by  the  whole  length  of  the  table,  but 
he  never  lost  acute  sense  of  her  presence.  Colonel  Tarpalin 
had  taken  her  in  to  dinner,  and  one  of  the  school-boys  who 
were  staying  in  the  house  sat  on  her  left.  It  was  a  sort  of 
relief  to  David  that  this  boy  should  be  Hullway,  who  was 
younger  than  himself,  and  not  Welwyn,  who  was  older. 
He  recognised  the  significance  of  this  relief,  but  it  did  not 
make  him  ashamed,  as  the  momentary  pain  which  his 
friend  had  caused  him  had  made  him  ashamed.  But,  like 
the  sudden  disconcerting  twinge  of  pain,  it  was  neverthe- 
less tribute  to  the  girl's  curious  power.  While  he  answered 
his  hostess's  questions  and  talked  to  her  —  about  his 
school  mostly,  the  recent  theatricals  (which  she  had  wit- 
nessed), Frank,  the  school  sports,  the  Glee  Club,  the 
games,  his  tastes  and  the  like  —  he  just  went  on  being  con- 
scious of  Theo.  He  managed  not  to  look  too  often  in  her 
direction,  and  he  knew  that  she  hardly  looked  in  his  at  all. 
Not  once,  from  the  soup  to  the  dessert,  did  he  catch  even 
the  tail  of  her  roguish  eye.  He  was  inclined  to  be  a  little 
bit  offended.  When  he  thought  of  their  extraordinary  con- 
versation .  .  .  for  it  had  been  extraordinary  ...  or  was  it 
only  her  way  of  dealing  with  him? 

That  thought  pulled  him  up  with  a  jerk.  And  was  this 
too  only  her  way  of  dealing  with  him? 

He  saw  how  differently  she  dealt  with  Colonel  Tarpalin 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  283 

who  was  telling  her  his  best  stories.  Her  mouth  asked  for 
no  pity  with  him.  The  childish  droop  of  the  lips  was  gone. 
The  lips  were  parted  in  smiles  or  in  laughter.  She  had 
adorable  teeth — like  the  finest  porcelain,  only  more  trans- 
parent. They  were  strong,  too,  though  their  whiteness 
made  them  look  fragile  —  as  if,  Hke  porcelain,  they  would 
chip  easily.  And  from  time  to  time  she  turned  to  Hullway, 
and  made  him  happy  with  a  word  or  a  laugh  or  a  look. 
And  sometimes  she  contrived  that  the  talk  at  her  end  of 
the  table  should  be  general,  and  one  or  another  of  her 
admirers  would  be  made  happy  also. 

But  not  a  look  for  David,  to  whom  so  short  a  time  ago 
she  had  said,  "You,  too?"  and  "Eric  comes  to-morrow," 
and  the  other  words  that  had  been  so  unusual  and  so  curi- 
ously intimate.  When  he  had  sat  down  to  dinner  he  felt 
that  he,  who  knew  her  not  at  all,  knew  her  better,  perhaps, 
than  any  one  else  in  the  room.  To  no  one  else  at  least 
could  quite  the  same  confidence  have  been  shewn  or  given, 
in  quite  the  same  way.  Well,  was  that  just  her  way  with 
him? 

He  had  a  sudden  sense  of  his  own  inexperience,  and  felt 
humiliated;  and  as  immediate  a  sense  of  the  experience 
which  must  be  hers,  and  felt  angry. 

She  might  anyway  just  look  at  him.  But  she  did  not. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  had  turned  to  Welwyn,  who  was  on  her 
other  side,  and  David  heard  her  pleasant  "Now,  tell  me," 
as  he  crumbled  his  bread. 

The  long  table  gleamed  with  silver  and  glass.  The  room 
was  brown,  panelled,  not  unlike  the  dining-room  in  Cheyne 
Walk  and  of  about  the  same  period.  It  was  of  course  very 
much  larger.  It  had  the  same  long  narrow  windows.  Like 
his  bedroom,' it  was  beautifully  proportioned.  The  dinner- 
table  was  lighted  with  candles;  the  rest  of  the  room  was  in 
shadow,  except  at  that  end  of  it  where  the  sideboard  was, 
and  the  great  screen  of  Spanish  leather  which  hid  the 
door  at  which  the  servants  entered.  You  could  only  dimly 
see  the  portraits  on  the  walls. 


284  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

David  noted  these  details  in  his  determination  not  to 
let  his  eyes  stray  toward  Miss  Nevern. 

His  neighbour  on  the  other  side,  disentangling  herself 
from  her  own  partner  at  the  feast,  now  claimed  him. 

"Was  n't  it  sporting,"  she  said,  "of  Frank  Tarpalin  to 
get  up  these  theatricals?  When  he  asked  me  to  act  I 
simply  jumped.  I  'm  only  playing  the  Maid,  you  know, 
but  one  gets  all  the  fun  in  a  small  part  without  any  of 
the  responsibility.  Frank  Tarpalin  says  you  're  frightfully 
good.   No,  don't  deny  it.  He  says  you  are." 

And  then  she  took  him  aback  with  "What  do  you  think 
of  Miss  Nevern?" 

"I  haven't  seen  her,"  he  answered,  choosing  to  think 
that  she  meant  Miss  Nevern's  acting. 

"No,  no,"  said  Miss  Aylmer,  "I  did  n't  mean  that.  I 
meant  of  Theo  herself." 

However,  she  answered  for  him. 

"I  think  she's  perfectly  lovely,"  she  said,  "don  't  you? 
She's  far  and  away  the  prettiest  girl  in  this  part  of  the 
world.  They  live  near  Astonbury,  you  know,  but  she's 
hardly  ever  at  home.  Everybody  wants  her,  you  see. 
She's  always  staying  about.  You  have  n't  seen  her  dance 
yet,  have  you?" 

"No." 

"Perhaps  we  shall  dance  after  dinner.  I  do  hope  so, 
don't  you?" 

It  was  all  chatter,  but  it  recovered  David's  spirits  for 
him.  He  allowed  himself  to  look  down  the  table. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  at  this  moment  returned  to  him. 

" Now,  Ettringham,"  she  said,  "tell  me.  I  was  at  school 
with  Lady  Penstephen  —  Susan  Cantrell  she  was  then.  I 
have  n't  seen  her  for  years,  now.  She's  your  aunt,  would 
it  be,  or  your  cousin?" 

"Cousin,"  David  said  —  "  that  is,  her  husband  was  my 
father's  first  cousin." 

"  I  remember  going  over  to  Ettringham  years  ago  when 
I  was  staying  near  Warwick.  We  drove  over  to  luncheon, 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  285 

I  think.  The  house  fascinated  me,  I  recollect.   Has  n't  it 
been  very  curiously  and  yet  very  successfully  added  to?" 

"  I  believe  so,"  David  said.   "  I  've  heard  so." 

"  I  've  never  seen  it,"  he  added  after  a  moment. 

For  the  first  time  it  struck  him  as  curious  —  really  curi- 
ous —  that  he  had  not.  The  natural  thing  would  surely 
have  been  that  he  should,  at  least,  have  had  Ettringham 
as  a  topic  to  discuss  with  any  one  who  should  speak  of  the 
place  to  him.  And  he  had  not  even  that. 

"I  never  met  Sir  Joseph.  He  was  away  —  fishing,  if  I 
remember  rightly.  He  was  drowned  fishing,  was  n't  he? 
And  his  only  son.  So  dreadful.  How  many  years  ago  is 
that?  Eight  or  nine,  I  suppose.  I  remember  so  well  reading 
the  account  in  the  papers.  Somewhere  in  Ireland,  was  n't 
it?" 

David  remembered  too.  He  was  fated  to  be  whisked 
back  to  Homburg,  it  seemed,  that  evening.  He  remem- 
bered Frau  Finkel's  room  with  the  grained  woodwork  and 
the  big  gold-framed  'mirrors,'  and  the  chair  which  he  had 
broken,  and  the  telegram  and  the  curious  effect  of  the  tele- 
gram. It  was  from  then  that  the  real  changes  had  dated, 
though  they  had  seemed  to  date  from  so  much  later.  His 
father  and  mother  had  been  away,  and  there  had  been  the 
strange  day  of  what  Betsy  had  called  the  Rejoicing.  How 
it  had  rained  on  the  day  of  the  Rejoicing !  He  remembered 
that  too.  And  his  mother,  who  had  looked  anxious  at  the 
sight  of  the  telegram,  had  looked  frightened  when  she 
heard  its  contents. 

How  vividly  he  remembered. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  was  speaking. 

"I  should  greatly  like  to  see  Susan  Cantrell  again.  I 
wonder  whether  I  could  induce  her  to  come  here.  I  think  I 
must  write  to  her.  Yes,  I  '11  write  and  tell  her  you  're  stay- 
ing here." 

Somehow  David  felt  that  the  conversation  was  becoming 
uncomfortable.  He  did  not  know  why  he  should  feel  this, 
but  he  did.    Mrs.  Tarpalin  thought,  it  was  clear,  that  he 


286  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

made  a  bond,  or  at  any  rate  a  link.  And  though  he  knew 
of  no  reason  why  he  should  not,  he  knew  that  he  made 
neither.  Why  had  he  never  been  asked  to  Ettringham? 
It  was  surely  strange  that  he  had  not,  for  Johnny  was  often 
asked  there.  Why  did  his  mother  not  go  there  now?  His 
father  went  from  time  to  time.  He  felt  constrained  to  tell 
Mrs.  Tarpalin  that  he  had  not  met  his  cousin,  and  after  a 
moment's  hesitation  he  did  so. 

Her  surprise  was  so  genuine  that  she  had  shewn  it  before 
(as  it  seemed  to  him  —  and  as  he  would  have  expressed 
it  to  himself)  she  knew  what  she  was  doing. 

"  But  surely  —  "  she  began,  and  broke  off. 

"No,"  he  said,  "oddly  enough,  I've  never  seen  her.  I 
don't  think  she  ever  comes  to  London,  and  you  see  I  've 
never  been  to  Ettringham." 

"Well,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  smiling,  and  mistress  once 
more  of  her  wits,  "all  I  can  say  is  that  we  have  the  advan- 
tage of  her  at  Red  Alban." 

She  gave  David  a  look,  as  she  spoke,  that  he  felt  he 
ought  to  have  been  able  to  interpret,  but  could  not.  It 
seemed  to  hold  more  than  the  kindliness  which  was  so 
clearly  defined  in  it.  No  doubt  about  the  kindliness. 
There  was  something  protective  in  that  —  almost  affec- 
tionate, almost  what  is  known  as  motherly.  What  else 
there  was,  what  else  that  was  to  which  he  lacked  the  key, 
seemed  as  if  it  must  be  —  though  why  should  it  be?  —  an 
unspoken  criticism  of  his  relation. 

She  said  no  more  about  asking  her  old  school  friend  to 
Red  Alban,  and  when  she  spoke  next,  which  she  did  im- 
mediately, it  was  to  change  the  conversation. 

David,  mystified  and  perplexed,  listened  to,  or  at  least 
heard,  her  reasons  for  desiring  the  light  railway. 

"  If  you  were  a  housekeeper,  and  lived  five  miles  from  a 
fishmonger  who  never  has  anything,  you  would  under- 
stand," she  said.  "And,  oh,  how  I  envy  you,  living  as  you 
do  in  London,  with  everything  at  your  very  doors.  It  was 
the  dream  of  my  life  when  I  was  a  girl  to  live  in  London,  so 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  287 

of  course  I  married  a  soldier  and  had  to  follow  the  drum 
all  my  young  days,  and  just  when  I  might  have  hoped  to 
settle  down  in  Kensington  Square  —  I  had  always  in- 
tended it  to  be  Kensington  Square!  —  my  husband  came 
in  for  what  they  call  down  here  the  Coloured  Albans,  and 
here  I  am  a  country  woman  for  the  rest  of  my  natural  life." 

Dinner  drew  to  an  end.  The  servants  put  the  decanters 
upon  the  table  and  disappeared.  As  the  party  was  en- 
tirely young,  Mrs.  Tarpalin  had  no  more  important  eye  to 
catch  than  Miss  Nevern's.  David,  who  had  not  once  been 
able  to  catch  it,  saw  that  his  hostess  caught  it  without 
difficulty.  He  was  quite  certain  then  that  the  withholding 
of  her  gaze  was  not  unintentional.  And  then,  just  as  she 
was  passing  him,  she  gave  him  a  smile  all  to  himself  and 
took  him  captive  once  more.  When  Theo  Nevern  smiled 
at  you  .  .  . 

He  turned  back  to  the  table  in  a  happy  dream. 

Yes,  his  vanity  only,  and  his  boyish  vanity  at  that,  for 
his  heart  —  even  his  heart  of  a  boy  —  was  not  touched. 
What  her  smile  had  done  was  to  put  him  once  more  on 
good  terms  with  himself.  In  spite  of  his  physical  develop- 
ment which  allowed  him  to  play  a  man's  part  on  the  stage, 
and  perhaps  off  the  stage  too,  he  was  quite  as  young  as  his 
seventeen-and-a-half  years,  or  he  would  probably  have 
seen  in  her  smile  (bestowed  after  it  had  been  withheld) 
but  a  further  instance  of  her  way  of  dealing  with  that  one 
of  her  admirers  who  happened  to  be  David  Penstephen. 
He  was,  however,  and  he  did  not.  His  spirits  rose  at  a 
bound. 

Colonel  Tarpalin  had  moved  now  and  was  hospitably 
busy  with  the  decanters  —  a  purely  nominal  hospitality, 
for  the  party  was  too  young  to  make  wine  the  real  occupa- 
tion of  the  moment.  The  'What  are  you  drinking's?'  were 
cordial  but  not  unduly  pressing. 

"Mr.  Penstephen,  another  glass  won't  hurt  you.  Well, 
half  a  glass,  then.  Frank,  has  Mr.  Welwyn  all  he  wants?" 


888  DAVID   PENSTEPHEN 

They  were  spared,  or  not  indulged  in,  the  half-hour's 
lalk  about  vintages,  which  in  those  days  would  still  have 
followed  if  his  guests  had  been  older.  Claret,  as  well  as 
port  wine,  was  still  drunk  after  dinner;  the  cigarette  only 
beginning  then  to  revolutionise  the  men's  hour. 

Frank  Tarpalin,  however,  —  young  modern!  —  brought 
out  his  cigarette  case.  His  father  never  lit  his  cigar  till  he 
was  in  the  smoking-room.  Ladies  were  still  supposed  not 
to  like  the  smell  of  smoke. 

"To  be  sure,  Frank.  Yes,  not  a  bit.  Mr.  Penstephen, 
you  will  smoke,  and  Mr.  Welwym  — ?  No,  Mr.  HuUway, 
I  won't  split  on  you  —  nor  on  you,  Mr.  Filston,  if  you  can 
see  your  way  to  reconcile  the  vicious  act  with  your  own 
conscience.  Let  me  tell  you,  though,  all  of  you,  that  you  're 
ruining  your  palates."  He  shook  his  head.  "England  is 
changing,  Mr.  Penstephen.  I  see  the  time  coming  —  no, 
it  won't  be  just  yet,  maybe  —  when  a  taste  in  wine,  dis- 
crimination, a  fine  appreciation  of  shades  and  meanings, 
will  be  things  of  the  past.  We've  got  away  from  abuses,  I 
grant  you.  Our  grandfathers'  days  —  the  two-bottle  men, 
yes,  and  the  three;  loosened  cravats;  more  than  just  legs 
under  the  mahogany;  more  than  just  a  loosening  of  cra- 
vats 1  Shocking,  Most  reprehensible.  But  a  real  palate,  the 
educated  tongue  of  a  gentleman,  a  perception  of,  and  for, 
what  I  might  call  the  poetry  of  the  grape  .  .  .  Ah,  a  differ- 
ent thing  altogether  .  .  .  going,  too,  going,  presently  to  be 
gone.  A  pity,  I  think,  and  you  help  it  on  its  way.  There, 
Frank,  your  father's  protest.  He  was  once  as  young  as 
you.   Enjoy  your  cigarettes." 

Hullway,  not  to  be  done  out  of  one  good  thing  by  an- 
other, sipped  his  claret  as  he  smoked;  and  Filston  who 
could  not  resist  the  delights  of  chocolate-creams,  a  dish  of 
which  was  at  his  elbow,  added  them  to  the  joys  of  tobacco. 

"Well,  well,"  said  Colonel  Tarpalin,  "who  knows  but 
you're  right?"  And,  like  Mrs.  Tarpalin  a  few  minutes 
earlier,  turned  to  David  with  a  question  about  Ettring- 
ham.  The  shooting  used  to  be  very  good  in  Sir  Joseph's 


DAVID   PENSTEPHEN  289 

time,  Colonel  Tarpalin  had  always  heard.  Did  Lady 
Penstephen  preserve  much  game  there?  Difficult,  of 
course,  always,  for  a  woman.  How  had  her  pheasants  done 
that  year? 

David  knew,  it  chanced,  that  the  Ettringham  shooting 
was  let.  He  was  able,  therefore,  to  make  answer  without 
hesitation. 

"Ah,  it  generally  comes  to  that,"  said  his  host.  "The 
men  of  the  family,  however,  might  have  wished  otherwise, 
eh?  Your  father,  for  instance,  and  now  of  course  there  's 
yourself." 

But  David  did  not  shoot. 

"It's  the  difficulty  of  the  keepers,"  Colonel  Tarpalin 
went  on.  "A  woman  can't  look  after  them,  can't  know 
how  to,  can  she?  I  have  trouble  enough  myself.  If  Frank 
would  allow  me  I  'd  let  the  White  Alban  shooting  and  con- 
tent myself  with  what  I  have  here." 

David  hoped  the  talk  had  left  Ettringham.  For  some 
reason  he  did  not  want  to  have  to  say  again  that  he  had 
never  been  there.  But  he  had  to.  Colonel  Tarpalin  spoke 
of  the  house  and  its  interesting  oddness. 

"Yes,"  David  said,  "I  know,  of  course,  but  I  have  n't 
seen  it." 

As  before  this  caused  surprise. 

"No,  I've  never  been  to  Ettringham." 

To  cover  what  seemed  a  momentary  awkwardness  he 
drew  on  his  slender  knowledge. 

"General  Burke  has  the  shooting  —  a  neighbour;  my 
little  brother's  godfather.  My  father  has  shot  there  with 
him." 

"Ah,  yes,  to  be  sure.  General  Burke.  Yes,  Owen  Burke 
—  the  60th  —  no,  the  Horse  Artillery,  was  n't  it?  Let  me 
see.  Windlebury,  is  n't  that  the  name  of  his  place?  A  fine 
old  house,  I  believe,  but  not  much  land.  Ah.  He  has  the 
shooting." 

There  was  a  desultory  moment.  Colonel  Tarpalin, 
seeming  to  turn  things  over  in  his  mind,  took  a  walnut  and 


290  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

looked  about  for  the  nut-crackers.  They  were  near  David, 
who  handed  them  to  him.  He  cracked  his  nut  and  peeled 
its  kernel,  talking  the  while  of  pheasants  and  partridges, 
hares  and  rabbits,  and  then  forgot  to  eat  it.  David  knocked 
the  ash  from  the  end  of  his  cigarette,  and,  with  his  dessert 
knife,  pushed  the  ash  about  upon  his  plate,  fitting  it  to  the 
outlines  of  a  flower  in  the  pattern. 

Afterwards  David  wondered  whether  there  had  really 
been  any  pause  before,  lest  he  should  have  seemed  to  im- 
pute inhospitality  to  his  relation,  he  explained  that  the 
rest  of  his  family  had  been  to  Ettringham.  It  was  only  he 
who  had  not  been  there  —  oh,  yes,  and  his  sister. 

"It's  babies  she  adores,"  he  said.  "I  think  she'd  like 
to  have  my  little  brother  there  always."  He  thought  of 
Johnny  and  smiled  to  himself.  "Any  one  would,"  he  said. 

"How  old  is  he?"  Colonel  Tarpalin  said.  This  was  a 
question  one  might  ask. 

David  told  him  to  a  day. 

"But  he  was  a  baby  quite  lately,"  he  added,  smiling. 

"They  have  a  charm,  haven't  they,  young  things?" 
said  Colonel  Tarpalin.  "All  young  things."  And,  "Well, 
well,"  he  finished,  with  his  wife's  look  and  almost  with  her 
very  words,  "we  have  the  advantage  of  your  cousin,  Mr. 
Penstephen." 

Ten  minutes  later  he  remembered  his  walnut,  ate  it, 
emptied  his  glass,  and  proposed,  if  no  one  would  have  any 
more  wine,  that  they  should  join  the  ladies  in  the  drawing- 
room. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Again  for  David  the  sense  of  meanings  which  escaped 
him.  He  had,  moreover,  the  same  feehng  as  before  that,  in 
some  way  which  he  did  not  understand,  his  cousin  at  Et- 
tringham  was  held  to  have  laid  herself  open  to  criticism. 
Whatever  this  criticism  was,  it  appeared  to  react  favour- 
ably upon  himself.  He  had,  he  knew,  made  a  favourable 
impression  upon  his  hosts  at  the  start,  but  the  favour  they 
both  showed  him  had  perceptibly,  and  quite  unaccount- 
ably, increased.  The  curious  thing  was  that  this  should 
have  shewn  itself,  not  in  the  attitude  of  one  of  them  only, 
but  in  that  of  each  of  them  and  in  exactly  the  same  man- 
ner. They  had  both  looked  a  sort  of  protective  warmth  at 
the  friend  of  their  son.  Though  he  did  not  understand  it, 
it  contributed  to  his  present  comfort.  He  forgot  that  there 
had  been  two  moments  which  had  not  seemed  quite  com- 
fortable. He  was  very  happy  at  Red  Alban. 

The  ladies  were  found,  not  in  the  drawing-room,  but  in 
the  billiard-room,  using  that  as  a  passage  to  the  music- 
room  which  was  beyond  it.  Miss  Nevern  and  Miss  Aylmer 
—  Theo  and  Lucy  —  were  playing  a  game  of  Fifty  up ; 
Miss  Blake  —  Emma  —  marking  for  them  and  hanging 
with  Oo's  of  admiration  upon  Theo's  strokes.  Mrs.  Tar- 
palin  sat  by  the  hearth,  winding  a  skein  of  wool  which 
Miss  Davenport  was  holding  for  her.  All  these  ladies,  as 
the  men  came  in,  looked  up  or  looked  round,  except  Theo, 
who  chalked  her  cue. 

"  I  thought  perhaps  you  'd  like  to  dance,"  Mrs.  Tarpalin 
said.  "We  're  waiting  for  the  fire  to  burn  up  in  the  music- 
room.  (Sure  your  arms  are  n't  tired?"  —  to  Miss  Daven- 
port.) "Just  see,  Frank,  if  the  room's  warm  —  really 
warm,  mind.    You'll  all  keep  warm  enough.    It's  your 


292  DAVID   PENSTEPHEN 

poor  old  bird  of  a  mother  at  the  piano  I  'm  thinking 
of." 

"  Oo !  Well  played !  Good  stroke ! "  —  little  shrieks  from 
the  worshipping  Blake.  "  Oo !  Oo !  Did  you  see  that?  " 

"Such  bias  in  the  marker  is  n't  fair,"  wailed  the  Aylmer, 
who  was  indeed  playing  a  losing  game.  "  It 's  calculated  to 
put  me  off  my  stroke." 

"If  you  get  another  stroke,"  cried  the  Blake.  "Oo  — 
Theo's  in  for  one  of  her  long  breaks.  You  are,  Theo,  I  'm 
sure  of  it.  Oo!" 

And  Theo  seemed  to  be.  David,  watching  now,  mar- 
velled at  the  ease  with  which  she  brought  off  what  often 
looked  so  difficult.  Colonel  Tarpalin  had  come  over  to 
watch,  too.  Gradually  all  lined  up  to  watch,  except  the  two 
who  were  concerned  with  the  wool-winding,  and  they 
watched  over  their  shoulders. 

Frank  came  back  to  say  the  fire  was  burning  satisfacto- 
rily and  the  room  quite  warm. 

"Really  warm?"  his  mother  asked. 

"  Even  over  by  the  piano." 

Theo  put  down  her  cue. 

"To  the  ball,  then!"  she  said. 

"No,  no,"  they  all  protested,  "finish  your  break." 

"No."  She  shook  her  head.  "The  game's  drawn.  Come 
along,  Frank,  I  'm  going  to  dance  with  you." 

"Not  till  I 've  done  my  winding,"  said  the  band. 

"Go  on,  Theo,  finish." 

They  could  not  prevail  upon  her. 

"  I  'm  going  to  play  for  you  till  Mrs.  Tarpalin  is  ready. 
Come  along,  Colonel  Tarpalin,  bring  your  cigar  into  the 
music-room.  Give  these  young  men  a  lead." 

"No,  no,  Theo,  you  must  dance."  The  worshipping 
Emma  reached  the  piano  first.  She  broke  into  the  waltz  of 
the  moment. 

Theo  swayed  to  the  rhythm  of  it,  and,  though  she  had 
told  Frank  Tarpalin  that  she  would  dance  with  him,  it 
was  to  David  that  she  gave  herself.   David  took  Frank's 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  293 

laughing  punch  in  the  ribs,  as  he  caught  her,  and,  laughing 
too  and  a  httle  bit  flushed  with  the  pleasure  her  choice  of 
him  gave  him,  danced  away  with  her. 

"Traitors  both  of  you!"  Frank  called  after  them. 

Welwyn  danced  with  Miss  Aylmer.  Frank  threw  the 
other  two  boys  at  each  other,  and,  giggling,  and  with  the 
gainly  ungainliness  of  calves  or  puppies  or  colts  or  other 
young  animals,  they  took  the  floor  together,  while  he  went 
to  fetch  Miss  Davenport  and  to  hurry  his  mother. 

He  returned  with  Miss  Davenport,  having  wrested  the 
wool  from  her,  and  left  his  mother,  who  would  not  be  hur- 
ried, winding  it  from  the  unhelping  back  of  a  chair, 

"  I  knew  you  could  dance,"  Miss  Nevern  said  to  David. 

"Only  because  I  care  for  it,"  said  David.  "I  get  no 
practice." 

He  thought  on  as  he  danced.  He  liked  all  that  you  did 
with  the  suppleness  of  your  body  —  skating,  swimming. 
It  was  the  control  of  your  body  in  dancing,  was  n't  it,  that 
made  the  joy  of  dancing?  The  response  of  your  body  to 
your  will,  and  to  something  more  than  your  will.  Yes,  and 
in  the  response  of  another  body  to  your  own.  His  partner 
was  easy  to  steer,  answering  like  a  horse  with  a  delicate 
mouth  to  a  lightest  hand  on  the  bridle.  The  two,  as  the 
old  novels  used  to  say,  moved  as  one.  Yes,  David  could 
dance,  and  so  could  Miss  Nevern.  Mrs.  Tarpalin  coming 
in  now,  her  wool-winding  finished,  stopped  at  the  door  to 
watch  them.  Welwyn  and  Miss  Aylmer  stopped;  Frank 
and  Miss  Davenport.  There  were  left  dancing  the  two 
giggling,  pulling  boys,  and  David  and  Theo.  The  giggling 
boys  stopped,  and  there  danced  on  David  and  Theo. 

"They  're  watching  us,"  David  whispered,  half  smiling. 

"What  does  it  matter?" 

They  danced  the  dance  to  the  end. 

Miss  Blake  —  Emma  —  could  play.  Mrs.  Tarpalin 
could  play  too,  but  with  a  difference.  It  takes  a  dancer, 
perhaps,  for  dance  music,  and  Miss  Blake,  David  found, 


294  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

her  Oo's  notwithstanding,  could  dance.  She  had  the  light- 
ness of  foot  of  most  fat  persons.  Mrs.  Tarpalin  may  have 
had  it  when  she  followed  the  drum;  but  many  drums  had 
been  beaten  since  then,  and  her  waltzes  were  of  the  tum- 
tum-tum  order.  Not  till  Miss  Blake  played  again,  when 
Theo  Nevern  shamelessly  threw  over  one  of  the  nice  calves 
or  puppies  or  colts  for  David,  did  David  get  such  another 
dance  as  had  opened  the  evening's  proceedings. 

He  was  now  enjoying  himself  greatly.  Miss  Nevern 
made  no  pretence  of  not  counting  him  her  best  partner. 
She,  prima  ballerina  assoluta  of  all  the  balls  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood, might  speak,  and  spoke. 

"You'll  have  to  spare  Mr.  Penstephen  to  us  next  year 
for  the  hunt  ball,"  she  said  to  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  before  him. 

"Nothing  of  the  sort,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin.  "Mr.  Pen- 
Stephen,  if  we  can  induce  him  to  come  down  for  it,  will 
come  to  us.  Theo!  This  is  positive  poaching.  I  never 
heard  of  anything  so  unblushing." 

It  was  the  happy  David  who  did  the  blushing.  Nothing 
in  all  life  so  delightful,  perhaps,  as  the  sense  of  being 
wanted;  nothing  so  flattering  to  young  vanity.  All  the 
promises  are  here.  Impossible  not  to  enjoy  his  'success.' 

So  the  evening  passed.  David's  ears  should  have  burned 
later. 

In  two  rooms  at  Red  Alban  that  night  David  was  the 
topic  of  conversation. 

The  girls  congregated  by  Theo's  fire. 

"He  can  dance,"  said  Emma  Blake. 

"Can't  he!"  said  Lucy  Aylmer. 

"He's  very  good-looking,"  said  Miss  Davenport.^- 

They  looked  at  her  gratefully.  That  seemed  to  be  what 
they  both  meant. 

"He 's  got  the  most  beautiful  hands,"  said  Miss  Aylmer 
at  once.  "  I  was  noticing  them  at  dinner." 

"I  noticed  them  too,"  said  Emma,  and  forgot  her  Oo's 
in  the  soft  influences  of  the  moment.  "They  're  so  expres- 
sive. They  really  say  things,  don't  they?  Should  n't  you 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  295 

think  he  was  a  poet?  Or  do  you  think  they  ought  to  paint 
pictures?" 

Theo  did  not  say  anything.  She  was  in  a  pensive  mood, 
but  seemed  to  hke  hearing  the  others  talk.  A  gentle  melan- 
choly came  over  them.  These  young  girls  —  Theo  perhaps 
excepted  —  were  ready  to  be  quite  frank  with  themselves 
and  each  other.  They  were  in  love  with  love,  and  inclined 
to  think  themselves  in  love  with  David.  In  their  dressing- 
gowns  and  with  their  hair  down,  they  looked,  in  the  fire- 
light, like  a  detachment  of  the  Twenty  Lovesick  Maid- 
ens, or,  since  it  was  Theo's  fancy  to  sit  in  the  firelight  and 
they  had  all  blown  out  their  candles  as  they  came  in, 
like  four  —  perhaps  only  three  —  of  the  Wise  or  Foolish 
Virgins. 

"Hands  mean  so  much." 

"  I  think  they  're  hands  for  the  piano." 

"Or  the  violin." 

"Yes,  I  can  see  him  playing  the  violin.  Have  you  ever 
been  over  a  china  factory?" 

Emma  and  Lucy  had  not.  Theo  did  not  answer. 

"You  see  hands  like  his  there." 

"Potter's  hands!" 

"Yes,  hands  bred  to  whiteness  and  slenderness  by  the 
generations  of  hands  that  have  preceded  them.  Father  to 
son,  father  to  son.  Delicate  sensitive  work  —  moulding, 
turning  on  the  wheel.  The  vessel  rising  up  under  the  in- 
spiring long  fingers.  The  man  who  made  the  cup  which  I 
bought  for  a  memento,  had  hands  like  a  Botticelli  angel. 
The  cup  seemed  to  be  drawn  up  under  them  as  they  only 
hovered  over  it.  I  have  the  cup  now.  When  I  look  at  it  I 
can  always  recall  the  m.agic." 

"A  cup.  That 'sit.  That  really  is  it.  I  can  see  his  hands 
holding  a  Chalice." 

"Priest's  hands?"  Theo  spoke  suddenly. 

"  Not  exactly.  I  was  thinking  of  the  Graal." 

"Oh,  Sir  Galahad." 

"WeU?" 


296  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Theo  shook  her  head. 

"They're  strong  hands." 

"That's  why  I  thought  the  violin." 

"Or  the  piano." 

"  I  see  them  holding  a  skull,"  said  Theo. 

"Hamlet,"  said  Emma  Blake  enthusiastically.  "You 
mean  they  're  actor's  hands." 

She  nodded. 

" But  we've  to  see  whether  he  can  act.  We  shall  see  to- 
morrow." 

"They  are  strong  hands,"  said  Miss  Aylmer.  "  I  'm  sure 
he 's  strong.  You  can  feel  that  he  is  when  he 's  dancing  with 
you.  He  holds  you  so  well.  Frank 's  strong,  too,  but  then 
he 's  thickset,  would  n't  you  say?  A  sailor's  figure.  He 
dances  well  and  he  holds  you  comfortably.  But  not  like 
Mr.  Penstephen." 

"Isn't  David  a  wonderful  name?"  said  Emma.  "A 
king's  name,  is  n't  it?" 

"A  psalmist's.  Your  poet,  Emma.  Good  for  you!" 

Miss  Blake  sighed  happily. 

"But  I  agree  with  Theo,"  she  said.  "  I  do  see  him  hold- 
ing a  skull." 

There  was  silence  upon  that.  The  girls  had  all  fallen 
into  attitudes  fitting  their  tender  mood  —  all  except  Theo, 
who,  though  she  was  pensive,  sat  upright.  Miss  Aylmer's 
face  might  have  been  bowed  over  a  harp  or  a  lute  or  other 
rather  mournful  instrument  of  music.  Miss  Davenport's 
head  was  supported  on  her  arm.  Emma's  two  hands  were 
folded  upon  her  breast. 

Presently  one  by  one  they  spoke  again. 

"He  couldn't,  you  know,  be  ordinary  with  that  ap- 
pearance." 

"Would  you  call  him  dark  or  fair?" 

"He  would  be  dark  or  fair  according  to  which  one  ad- 
mired. I  should  call  him  fair  —  not  as  fair,  of  course,  as 
Frank  Tarpalin,  but  fair." 

Miss  Davenport  said  this. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  297 

"Oh,  would  you?"  said  Miss  Aylmer.  "I  think  of  him 
as  dark." 

"How  do  you  think  of  him,  Theo?  As  dark  or  fair?",  i 

"  I  don't  know  that  I  do  think  of  him." 

"Theo  does  n't  have  to  think  of  people,"  said  Emma. 
"People  think  of  Theo.  I  wonder  whether  they  talk  of 
us." 

"They?" 

"Men." 

"There  isn't  one  in  the  house,"  said  Theo.  "We're 
talking  of  boys.  Do  we  realise  that  he  's  a  schoolboy!  If 
we  don't,  let  us!" 

"  Do  you  want  us  to  go,  Theo?  " 

"Oh,  Theo,  have  we  tired  you?" 

"Have  we  outstayed  our  welcome?" 

Soulful  as  they  had  been  to  that  moment,  they  were  as 
ready  to  giggle  as  the  calves  or  puppies  or  colts. 

"No.  I  really  agree  with  all  of  you.  Only  he's  a  nice 
healthy,  normal  boy,  and  because  we  're  sitting  in  the  dark 
(which  was  my  doing,  I  know)  and  because  it 's  midnight, 
—  but  really  I  suppose  because  we  're  girls  and  can't  help 
it,  —  we  're  turning  him  into  priests  and  poets  and  kings 
and  — " 

"And  Hamlets,"  put  in  Miss  Davenport. 

Theo  fell  into  silence.  Her  silence  was  an  admission; 
said  as  much  as  all  the  eloquence  of  the  three. 

In  that  roomful  of  girls  it  had  to  be  admitted  that  David 
was  very  attractive.  They  continued  to  talk  of  him.  At 
the  moment  when  at  last  the  conversation  began  to  flag  — 
though  only  then  by  reason  of  the  lateness  of  the  hour  — 
it  was  Theo  who  gave  it  a  fillip. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  had  said  that  he  had  a  romantic  history. 

Drowsy  eyes  grew  bright. 

"Oh,  Theo.  And  you  kept  it  to  yourself .  Till  now,  any- 
way, like  good  wine.  Why  did  n't  you  tell  us?" 

"Romantic!" 

They  looked  at  each  other. 


298  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"How  absolutely  thrilling.  I  said  his  eyes  were  melan- 
choly." 

"What  was  it?" 

"Mrs.  Tarpalin  would  n't  tell  me." 

"Wouldn't  tell  you?" 

"Or  couldn't.  I  don't  know.  It  was  yesterday,  you 
see,  —  the  day  before  yesterday  now.  One  did  n't  know 
him  then." 

"  It  can't  be  he  himself.  He 's  too  young  for  anything  to 
have  happened  to  him.  It  must  be  his  parents,  must  n't 
it?" 

"Perhaps  they  eloped  or  something." 

"Why  (if^^  w'/ you  ask?" 

"  I  think  Mrs.  Tarpalin  stopped  me.  You  know  how  you 
can  stop  people  asking  questions  without  saying  anything. 
I  have  a  sort  of  idea  that  she  had  let  what  she  said  slip  and 
regretted  it.  Anyway,  I  did  n't  know  then  that  it  would  be 
interesting  to  know." 

"Could  you  ask  now?" 

"No,  I  could  n't.  No  one  could." 

"  He  lives  in  London,"  Miss  Blake  said.  "  He  told  me  so 
when  we  were  dancing.  Was  n't  it  rather  hard  on  me  that 
I  could  n't  dance  to  my  own  playing?  Mrs.  Tarpalin 's  a 
darling,  but  I  do  play  dance  music  better  than  she  does.  I 
wish  I  lived  in  London.  Oo,  I  did  n't  mean  that.  Not  be- 
cause, I  did  n't  mean.  I  meant  I  did  just  wish  I  did.  It 
must  be  something  about  his  parents." 

"Perhaps  they  did  elope.  That  would  be  romantic 
enough,  would  n't  it?  You  played  divinely,  Emma.  He 
said  you  did.   I  tell  you  from  motives  of  gratitude." 

"That's  nice  of  you,  Lucy.  But  it  is  n't  any  of  us.  It's 
Theo." 

"It  is  n't  Theo,"  said  Theo,  "so  it  is  n't  any  one." 

They  lit  their  candles. 

As  they  were  going,  all  having  kissed  Theo,  one  of  them 
said,  "If  it  only  gave  elopements  and  things  in  Peerages 
and  Baronetages  we  could  look  him  up." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  299 

"Oh,  well,  it  would  say  something  about  him." 

So  thin  the  ice  on  which  the  unconscious  David  skated ! 

The  other  talk  of  him  was  in  Mrs.  Tarpalin's  bedroom 
the  other  side  of  the  house.  Mrs.  Tarpalin  also  wore  a 
dressing-gown,  but  she  did  not  look  like  a  Lovesick 
Maiden  or  a  Wise  or  a  Foolish  Virgin.  She  looked  much 
more  like  the  Mrs.  Hardcastle  she  was  to  play  in  the  com- 
ing theatricals. 

"Is  it  possible,"  she  said  to  her  husband,  "that  he  has 
n't  been  asked  to  Ettringham?" 

"Yes,  he  seems  not  to  have  been  asked." 

"And  is  it  possible  that  that 's  because  — ?" 

"They've  been  there — his  parents  and  the  young  one." 

"The  young  one?  The  brother?" 

Colonel  Tarpalin  nodded. 

"  He  told  me  that  at  dinner.  He  did  n't  appear  to  attach 
any  meaning  to  it.  That 's  the  odd  thing.  It  seemed  to  me 
as  if  he  only  mentioned  it  because  he  did  n't  want  to  do  his 
relation  an  injustice." 

"How  do  you  mean?" 

"She  does  n't  cut  the  family." 

"  It 's  just  the  family  that  I  'm  afraid  she  does  cut  —  the 
first  family." 

"  It  looks  like  that,"  said  Colonel  Tarpalin. 

They  looked  at  each  other  and  into  the  fire.  Mrs.  Tar- 
palin took  the  tongs,  and  carefully,  but  absently  also,  put 
back  some  bits  of  coal  which  had  fallen  on  to  the  hearth. 

"Could  any  one  be  so  —  so  narrow?"  she  said.   "That 

—  that  perfectly  charming  boy.  That  poor  boy." 

"  Instead  of  being  proud  of  him!"  said  Colonel  Tarpalin 

—  irrelevantly  only  in  a  grammatical  sense. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  said,  "I  can  hardly  believe  it.  Susan 
Cantrell  was  quite  human  —  a  rather  generous  girl.  She 
once  wrote  twenty-five  lines  for  me  of  fifty  which  were  set 
me  as  a  punishment  for  what  in  boys'  schools  is  called 
cribbing.   She  put  kindness  then  before  mere  correctness, 


300  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

so  she  had  sympathy  for  sinners.  It  is  n't  even  as  if  this 
nice  boy  was  the  sinner.  And  what 's  more,  I  don't  beheve 
his  mother  was.  No  boy  with  a  face  like  this  boy's  face 
ever  had  a  bad  mother.  Don't  tell  me ! " 

"  I  'm  not  telling  you,"  said  her  husband,  smiling.  "  I  'm 
with  you.  No,  I  'm  rejoicing  that  you  're  with  me." 

"Of  course  I  'm  with  you,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  "and  of 
course  you  're  with  me.  I  'm  thoroughly  ashamed  of  Susan 
Penstephen." 

"The  conventional  woman's  view,"  he  reminded  her. 

"Then  I  'm  ashamed  of  women,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin. 

She  put  down  the  tongs. 

"Really,  really,"  she  said,  "the  more  I  think  of  it!  The 
opportunity!  The  way  people  miss  their  chances!  It's 
amazing.  Getting  old.  A  widow.  Her  own  son  dead.  And 
this  boy  to  her  hand.  Goodness,  the  privilege  of  it!  To 
have  been  able  just  to  try  in  some  degree  to  make  up  to 
him!  She  could  n't  ever  really  make  up  to  him  —  no  one 
could,  but  to  have  the  power  to  do  something,  and  not  to 
use  it!  She  does  n't  know  him  apparently  —  has  n't  seen 
him,  I  gathered.  Either  has  n't  taken  the  trouble  to  see 
him,  or  has  deliberately  taken  the  trouble  not  to.  Well,  all 
I  can  say  is,  she  richly  deserves  her  loss." 

David's  hostess,  too,  under  the  spell  of  him!  A  Lady 
Jane,  after  all,  to  the  Maidens  offering  their  young  hom- 
age at  that  moment  in  Theo's  room? 

She  thought  for  a  little,  and  then  said  from  her  thoughts, 
which,  apparently,  she  expected  her  husband  to  follow, 
"  If  she 's  had  the  other  boy  there,  it  can't,  of  course,  mean 
anything  else." 

Colonel  Tarpalin  had  not,  however,  kept  pace  with  her. 

"Why,  ignoring  the  first  family,  of  course.  She  starts 
the  family,  as  the  law  does,  from  him  —  the  legitimate, 
the  heir.  Oh,  George,  that  poor  boy,  that  poor  poor  boy!" 

In  spite  of  her  Hardcastle  double  chins  her  eyes  filled 
with  tears. 

"He'll  be  all  right,"  said  Colonel  Tarpalin  at  once. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  301 

"He  *s  got  something  better  than  legitimacy.  Are  n't  you 
proving  it,  dear?  You,  who  never  saw  him  till  to-day,  are 
crying  over  him." 

"Crying  for  him,  George." 

She  felt  for  her  handkerchief  and  blew  her  nose. 

"How  his  mother  must  love  him,"  she  said,  snivelling. 

"But  something  is  worrying  me,"  her  husband  said  — 
as  if,  as  she  thought  to  herself  even  through  her  snufiflings, 
nothing  were  worrying  her!  —  " I  can  hardly  think  it,  yet, 
from  what  he  said,  from  his  manner  ...  Is  it  possible,  do 
you  think,  that  he  himself  does  n't  know?" 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  stopped  crying. 

"They  could  n't  not  have  told  him!" 

"So  I  should  have  supposed." 

"They  could  n't  have  kept  it  from  him.   Why,  every- 
body knows.    It  was  common  knowledge.     They  must 
know  it  at  the  school.  Frank  knew.  Why,  the  name  ..." 

"I  have  an  idea  all  the  same  that  he  does  n't." 

"But  —  why,  he  would  only  have  to  look  himself  up  in 
the  book  ..." 

"He  may  not  have  done  that.  It 's  just  conceivable.  If 
he  had  no  reason  for  supposing  —  Boys  don't  think  of 
these  things." 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  looked  frightened. 

"I  took  it  for  granted  he  knew.  We  must  ask  Frank. 
If  he  does  n't,  I  shan't  have  an  easy  moment  while  he's 
here.  George,  it's  ridiculous,"  she  came  back  to  that. 
"He  must  have  been  told." 

But  her  husband  did  not  reassure  her.  He  could  only 
tell  her  again  of  the  vague  impression  which  he  had  re- 
ceived. 

"I  have  nothing  to  go  on,"  he  said,  "beyond  the  boy's 
manner." 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  groaned. 

"Oh,  dear,"  she  said,  "with  the  house  full  of  girls  all  in- 
terested in  him!  Look  at  the  way  they  wanted  to  dance 
with  him.  Even  Theo,  who  has  the  pick  of  the  young  men 


302  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

wherever  she  goes.  Oh,  yes,  they  '11  be  looking  him  up,  we 
may  be  perfectly  certain  of  that.  Perfectly,  perfectly  cer- 
tain. I  know  girls  —  what  they  are  when  they  fancy  them- 
selves interested.  They  're  probably  talking  about  him 
this  minute." 

She  got  up  from  her  chair,  tying  the  tasselled  cords  of 
her  dressing-gown. 

"Where  are  you  going?" 

"To  put  away  a  few  books,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin.  "They 
need  n't,  at  any  rate,  be  lying  about." 

In  about  ten  minutes  she  came  back. 

"There,"  she  said,  "all  I  could  find  —  Lodge,  Debrett, 
Burke's  Landed  Gentry.  Is  there  anything  else?  I  shall 
put  them  in  my  wardrobe.  No,  Tilson  would  find  them 
there.  You  must  make  room  for  them  in  one  of  the  cup- 
boards in  your  dressing-room.  You  must  lock  them  up.  I 
hope  I've  remembered  them  all.  Use  n't  there  to  be  an- 
other Debrett  in  the  smoking-room?  You  must  look  in  the 
morning,  George,  in  case  I've  missed  any.  These  are  all 
fairly  recent  ones,  but  anything  not  older  than  nine  or  ten 
years  would  matter,  and  there  might  be  others  knocking 
about  somewhere  in  some  of  the  rooms.  Whittaker,  — 
would  there  be  anything  in  that?  I  don't  want  to  run  any 
risks.  It 's  criminal  of  them  if  they  have  n't  told  him  — 
though  from  his  mother's  point  of  view  I  can  quite  under- 
stand that  they  just  have  n't  been  able." 

She  opened  one  of  the  volumes  and  turned  the  pages. 

"Penshant,  Penshurst,  Penstable  —  Penstephen.  Here 
we  are.  Yes.  Well,  what  else  was  possible?  Here,  take  it. 
Take  them  away."  She  put  the  volume  blindly  into  his 
arms  with  the  others.  "And  I  was  right,"  she  said.  "Those 
silly  girls  have  n't  gone  to  bed  yet.  They're  all  still  talk- 
ing in  Theodore's  room." 


CHAPTER  V 

Frank  Tarpalin,  Interrogated  early  the  next  morning, 
was  found  not  to  know  whether  David  knew.  He,  Hke  his 
mother,  had  taken  it  for  granted  that  he  did  —  that  he 
must.  He  was  considerably  upset  by  the  doubt  that  his 
father  had  put  upon  what  had  seemed  to  him  a  certainty. 

"Good  Lord!"  he  said;  "poor  chap,  if  he  does  n't!" 

What  could  David's  parents  be  about? 

But  Mrs.  Tarpalin  said  she  understood  only  too  well 
what  one  of  them  was  about. 

"She  has  put  off  telling  him.  And  now  she  does  n't  dare. 
Or  she  has  hoped,  against  hope,  probably,  that  he  does 
know  —  that  somebody  else  has  told  him.  My  heart  bleeds 
for  her.  She's  tried  to  shelter  him.  It's  the  maternal  in- 
stinct. She 's  the  unhappiest  woman  in  England.  She  just 
does  n't  know  what  to  do." 

Frank  and  his  father  demurred  with  a  But  or  two. 

"No,"  she  said,  "it's  that.  I'm  only  guessing,  but  I'm 
guessing  right.  She  just  does  n't  know  what  to  do,  so  she 
does  nothing,  and  the  years  slip  by." 

"Well,  nothing  is  likely  to  happen  here,"  said  Frank. 
"We  shall  be  too  busy." 

"I  tell  your  mother  it  is  most  unlikely,"  said  Colonel 
Tarpalin. 

But  Mrs.  Tarpalin  shook  her  two  chins. 

"It's  the  unlikely  that  does  happen,"  she  said.  "If  it 
was  n't,  how  could  I  possibly  count  on  knowing  my  words?  " 

So,  into  a  company,  the  greater  part  of  which  for  one 
reason  or  another  was  acutely  conscious  of  him,  the  un- 
conscious David  came  down  to  breakfast. 

He  was  in  excellent  spirits.  All  the  influences  of  the 
house  contributed  to  his  well-being.  He  always  slept  well. 


304  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

and  had  waked  only  when  he  was  called.  It  had  been 
pleasant  from  between  the  warm  sheets  to  watch  the  foot- 
man who  valeted  him,  preparing  the  way  for  him  from 
slumber  to  the  duties  and  pleasures  of  the  day.  The  pleas- 
ures preponderated.  The  duties,  too,  would  be  pleasures. 
He  looked  forward  to  the  rehearsals.  Work?  Work  that 
you  loved  was  n't  work.  He  was  full  of  pleasurable  anti- 
cipations. To  the  pleasant  tune  of  them  he  went  to  sleep 
again.  When  he  woke  again  the  day  was  half-an-hour  older. 
But  he  had  been  told  that  the  breakfast  hour  was  as  elastic 
as  you  pleased,  so  he  did  not  hurry.  As  he  bathed  and 
dressed  he  whistled  of  sheer  lightness  of  heart.  His  cold 
bath  was  not  too  cold  for  him.  As  he  rubbed  his  body  to  a 
glow,  the  long  glass  must  have  given  him  an  exceedingly 
pleasant  picture  of  naked  youth  and  health.  This  too  may 
have  helped.  He  began  the  day  without  a  care. 

He  was  late,  but  not  the  last.  There  were  two  vacant 
places  at  the  table,  at  which,  as  they  came  down,  the  guests 
had  seated  themselves  as  they  liked,  or  as  chance  ordained. 
These  two  places  were  next  to  each  other.  David,  looking 
round  and  exchanging  good-mornings,  saw  that  Miss 
Nevern  was  not  down  yet.  The  other  of  them,  then,  would 
be  for  her.  He  was  helping  himself  to  coffee  at  the  side- 
table  as  she  came  in. 

She  leant  over  Mrs.  Tarpalin  and  kissed  her,  and  fol- 
lowed Frank  Tarpalin  to  where  David  stood  now  lifting  the 
covers. 

David  had  just  helped  himself  to  omelette  —  a  fresh  one 
had  just  been  brought  in  —  and  as  she  saw  it  she  said 
omelette  without  looking  farther. 

It  even  pleased  David  in  his  happy  mood  that,  as  they 
sat  side  by  side  presently,  they  should  be  eating  the  same 
thing. 

It  was  a  beautiful  morning.  Winter  though  it  was  — 
January,  heart  of  the  winter  —  the  sunshine  was  so  bright 
that  a  blind  or  two  had  been  partly  lowered  to  keep  the 
light  out  of  the  eyes  of  those  who  faced  it  at  the  table. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  305 

From  below  these  blinds  the  sun  streamed  on  to  the  table, 
catching  itself  in  silver  here,  in  the  cut-glass  of  a  honey  pot 
or  a  jam  jar  there,  and  everywhere  in  the  gleaming  damask. 
There  had  been  frost  in  the  night  and  a  white  rime  was  still 
on  the  bushes  outside,  and  on  the  grass  under  the  trees. 
David  from  his  seat  could  see  shining  lawns. 

"You  ought  all  to  spend  the  whole  day  out  of  doors," 
Mrs.  Tarpalin  said,  "but  your  stage-manager  is  not  going 
to  let  you." 

"We  can  have  till  a  quarter  past  eleven,"  said  Frank. 
"Then  solid  work." 

"Has  n't  he  a  stiff  lip!"  said  his  father.  "Thank  good- 
ness, I  'm  not  an  actor." 

"You  ought  to  be  playing  Mr.  Hardcastle,"  said  Frank. 

"No,  no,  I  'm  not  young  enough  to  play  old  men." 

He  had  finished  his  breakfast,  and  drifted  out  of  the 
room.  Mrs.  Tarpalin  went  off  presently  to  interview  the 
cook,  and  one  by  one,  or  in  twos  and  threes,  others  who  had 
finished  drifted  away  also.  The  later  ones  stayed  on. 

David  and  Theo  Nevern,  as  the  last  down,  were  pres- 
ently left  alone. 

"I'm  a  very  healthy  young  woman  in  the  morning," 
Miss  Nevern  said.  "I  have  n't  nearly  done.  I  want  some 
marmalade,  please,  Mr.  Penstephen,  —  unless  there's  any 
honey-in-the-comb.  Oh,  then  I  want  some  honey." 

David  also  ate  honey-in-the-comb.  Again  the  intimate 
isolated  feeling.  It  was  delightful.  David  had  never  en- 
joyed a  breakfast  more. 

When  they  had  finished  they  went  out  Into  the  garden, 
where  they  found  some  of  the  rest  of  the  party  throwing 
crumbs  to  the  birds.  Then  they  strolled  for  a  few  minutes 
in  the  sunshine  on  the  polished  gravel  paths.  Frank  Tar- 
palin, going  in,  called  to  them  to  say  that  the  rehearsal 
would  be  in  the  music-room. 

"A  quarter  past  eleven  sharp,  mind,"  he  said;  and  they 
answered,  "A  quarter  past,  all  right." 


3o6  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Presently,  from  strolling  hatless  in  the  sunshine,  they 
were  going  for  a  walk  in  earnest  —  a  short  walk.  Theo 
had  got  her  hat  and  coat,  and  David  his  cap  and  stick. 
They  had  three  quarters  of  an  hour  nearly.  Exercise  would 
be  good  for  them  before  they  began.  There  would  be  time 
to  walk  as  far  as  the  kennels  —  no,  as  far  as  the  bottom  of 
the  wood  by  the  lower  road  and  back  through  the  village. 

Any  one  else  coming?  The  girls  had  not  their  boots  on. 
Welwyn  had  followed  Frank  into  the  house.  The  younger 
boys  were  shy,  perhaps,  or  perhaps  they  were  sportsmen, 
and  felt  that  when  Miss  Nevern  chose  a  companion,  he 
should  have  the  field  to  himself.  The  girls  smiled  at  each 
other.  They  were  all  loyal  to  Theo's  acknowledged  su- 
premacy. If  David  must  go  walking  with  one  of  them, 
they  would  rather  it  was  with  her  than  —  each,  of  course, 
excepting  herself  —  any  other  of  their  number. 

But  over  those  that  were  left  there  fell  a  temporary 
blight.  David  and  Theo  withdrawn,  the  interest  of  the 
passing  minutes  seemed  gone  too.  Even  the  boys  were  con- 
scious of  some  sort  of  blank;  but  they,  more  self-sufhcing 
than  the  girls,  almost  at  once  found  amusement  in  an  old 
tennis  ball,  which  by  chance  lay  on  the  path,  and  which 
they  shied  in  turn  into  the  blue  overhead  (from  which  the 
bolts  fall!)  and  caught  or  tried  to  catch  as  it  returned  to 
earth.  The  girls  looked  at  their  pointed  shoes  and  at  the 
melting  rime  of  the  grass  and  went  back  into  the  house. 
They  did  not  talk  of  David  as  they  went,  but  the  thoughts 
of  each  of  them  —  and  each  of  them  knew  it  of  the  other 
two  —  followed  the  couple  on  their  walk. 

Miss  Davenport  said  she  ought  to  write  some  letters, 
but  made  no  attempt  to  do  so. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "how  I  hate  writing  letters.  I  never 
know  what  to  say.  I  wonder  what  time  the  early  post 
goes." 

The  others  told  her. 

"Oh,  then  I  have  n't  much  time.  What  are  you  going  to 
do?" 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  307 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Lucy  Aylmer.  "What  are  you, 
Emma?" 

"I  don't  quite  know." 

Eventually  they  all  gravitated  to  the  library.  They  idled 
there  by  the  fire,  looked  at  the  newspapers,  played  with 
one  of  the  dogs.  Emma  Blake  went  over  to  a  table  on  which 
an  expanding  bookcase  held  such  books  of  reference  as 
the  London  Directory,  the  Clergy  List,  the  Postal  Guide, 
the  Red  Book,  and  Army  and  Navy  Lists,  and  the  like. 

Mrs,  Tarpalin,  coming  in  to  write  some  menus,  asked 
her  if  there  was  anything  that  she  wanted. 

No,  Emma  said,  blushing,  a  Peerage  in  her  hand  —  but 
a  Peerage  which  she  saw  did  not  contain  a  Baronetage  — 
no,  thank  dear  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  she  was  only  fiddling. 

"The  rehearsal's  in  the  music-room,"  she  said,  "isn't 
it?" 

As  if  everybody  did  n't  know  that?  She  went  back  to  the 
smiling  girls  by  the  fire,  and  Mrs.  Tarpalin  began  to  write 
out  her  menus. 

"Could  n't  we  help  you  with  them?"  said  Miss  Daven- 
port. 

"What  did  I  tell  you?"  Mrs.  Tarpalin  said  to  Colonel 
Tarpalin  afterwards.  "Wasn't  I  right  to  go  round  last 
night  collecting  them  all?  Goodness,  goodness,  these  girls! 
It  is  n't  that  one  of  them  has  an  idea.  It's  only,  as  I  said, 
that  they're  all  interested.  Anything  about  him  would  be 
food  for  their  curiosity.  It  is  n't  malice  we  've  got  to  guard 
against,  it 's  admiration.  How  I  wish  the  next  fortnight  was 
safely  over." 

The  girls,  as  soon  as  their  hostess  was  out  of  the  room, 
chaffed  Emma.  "'No,  thank  you,  dear  Mrs.  Tarpalin, 
I'm  only  fiddling!'" 

"There  does  n't  seem  to  be  one  in  the  room,"  said  Miss 
Blake,  unperturbed.  "It's  no  good  your  looking  at  that, 
Lucy;  it's  only  a  Peerage." 

"/'m  only  fiddling,"  said  Miss  Aylmer.  "But  I  know 
I've  seen  one  somewhere." 


308!  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"What  else  could  I  have  said?  "  asked  Emma.  "  It 's  the 
sort  of  thing  you  can't  ask  for,  is  n't  it?" 

The  boys  had  found  an  old  tennis  racquet  and  were  play- 
ing cricket  now  with  the  ball.  The  girls  were  still  idling  by 
the  cheerful  library  fire.  Mrs.  Tarpalin  was  snatching  a 
look  at  her  part,  and  talking  to  one  of  the  housemaids  at 
the  same  time.  David  and  Miss  Nevern  were  somewhere 
near  the  bottom  of  the  wood ;  and  Eric  Dunstable  was  driv- 
ing from  White  to  Red  Alban. 

At  a  little  before  eleven,  Frank  Tarpalin,  arranging  the 
music-room  for  the  rehearsal  with  the  help  of  Welwyn,  was 
informed  that  Mr.  Dunstable  had  arrived,  and  went  out  to 
receive  him.  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  her  book  in  her  hand,  came 
downstairs  as  they  were  shaking  hands  in  the  hall,  and,  the 
girls  at  the  same  moment  coming  out  of  the  library  and  the 
three  boys  chancing  to  come  in  from  the  lawn,  a  general 
move  was  made  for  the  music-room. 

The  next  few  minutes  saw  the  arrival  of  a  brake  from 
Astonbury  with  such  of  the  members  of  the  cast  as  were 
not  staying  in  the  house,  and  thus,  nearly  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  before  the  time  arranged  for  the  rehearsal,  most  of  the 
company  had  assembled. 

It  was  perhaps  the  fault  of  the  sun.  It  was  a  day  for 
loitering.  The  bottom  of  the  wood  was  a  delightful  spot. 
Theo,  like  Diana,  was  a  huntress,  and  David  very  young 
and  very  comely.  In  the  sunshine  and  the  sharp  clear  air 
it  was  pleasant  to  add  a  captive  to  your  captives;  in  the 
sunshine  and  the  sharp  clear  air  equally  pleasant  to  let 
yourself  be  taken  (more  or  less)  captive  by  the  desire  of 
every  one's  eye.  There  was  a  stile  dividing  the  path  skirt- 
ing the  wood  from  the  field,  below  which  ran  the  lane  which 
led  to  the  village.  Here  they  sat  for  some  time  talking; 
breaking  twigs  from  the  dry  hedge;  presently  playing  a 
game  on  the  flat  top  of  the  stile  with  the  bits  of  wood  so 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  309 

obtained.  It  was  a  game  that  you  generally  played  with 
matches.  You  made  a  rough  pyramid  of  the  matches,  and 
with  two  used  as  pliers,  you  had,  turn  about,  to  extract 
matches  from  the  pile  without  knocking  the  whole  thing 
down.  The  twisted,  bent,  crooked,  knotted,  curved,  or 
even  forked,  nature  of  the  bits  of  stick  used  instead  of  the 
matches,  made  your  task  more  difficult.  Your  heads  were 
brought  very  near  together  as  you  played  and  watched. 
You  had  to  take  off  your  gloves.  Your  fingers  sometimes 
touched. 

"You  moved  it." 

"I  did  n't."  ? 

"How  can  you!" 

"  I  'm  quite  certain." 

"Well,  I  'm  going  to  watch  you  very  carefully.  I  *m  not 
going  to  let  you  cheat.  Let  me  see." 

The  brim  of  her  hat  grazed  the  brim  of  his  cap.  Neither 
stirred  while  the  hands  that  had  been  discussed  so  copiously 
the  night  before  in  Theo's  room  did  their  deHcate  work 
amongst  the  little  bits  of  stick. 

He  extricated  a  remarkably  crooked  fragment  of  twig 
without  jeopardising  the  hazardous  balance  of  the  rest. 
The  hat  and  the  cap  —  touching  —  did  not  move,  even 
then,  for  a  moment  or  two.  Then  Miss  Nevern  moved, 
and  the  little  spell  was  broken. 

She  was  quite  different,  David  was  thinking,  from  what 
she  had  seemed  at  their  first  meeting.  Difficult  now  to 
believe  that  the  curious  talk  beside  the  fire  in  the  hall  had 
ever  taken  place.  Her  lips  and  teeth  and  eyes  were  laugh- 
ing now;  the  tremulous  droop  of  the  lips  that  gave  her  face, 
at  times,  what  he  thought  of  as  the  Greuze  look,  gone.  But 
she  had  not  receded.  On  the  contrary,  he  felt  that  he  knew 
her  better.  And  she  was  n't  a  bit  less  dangerous.  He  re- 
membered his  sudden  momentary  jealousy  of  his  friend  — 
and  understood  it.  All  that  she  did,  all  that  she  shewed  of 
her  different  moods  might,  indeed,  as  he  had  suspected, 
be  her  'way'  with  whichever  of  her  admirers  was  with  her. 


310  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  / 

but  this,  if  it  was  so,  seemed  no  longer  to  matter.  It  was 
himself  that  she  had  chosen  for  this  walk.  He  was  the 
favoured  one  of  all  for  the  time  being.  She  had  given  a 
general  invitation  to  the  others  to  come,  too,  but  she  had 
not  meant  it  to  be  accepted. 

She  gave  a  cry.  She  had  thought  the  stick  she  was  mov- 
ing was  clear  of  the  rest,  and  a  minute  branching  at  the  end 
of  it  had  caught  in  the  others.  She  had  knocked  the  whole 
pile  down. 

Well,  it  was  a  game  that  was  supposed  to  be  played  not 
with  crooked  bits  of  twig,  but  with  matches  (so  that  how- 
ever you  played  it,  perhaps,  you  were  playing  approximately 
with  fire !) ,  and  they  had  both  done  wonders  in  keeping  the 
structure,  as  they  diminished  it,  standing  so  long. 

"Game  to  you,  though,"  said  Miss  Nevern  and  asked 
him  the  time. 

It  was  twenty-five  minutes  past  eleven,  and  (not  that  it 
mattered,  or  could  have  been  supposed  to  matter)  they 
were  a  mile  and  a  half  from  home. 

^  In  the  music-room  at  Red  Alban  the  rehearsal  was  in 
progress.  There  was  no  need  to  wait  for  David  or  Miss 
Nevern.  So  at  about  half-past  eleven  a  start  was  made 
without  them.  Their  absence,  however,  at  the  rehearsal 
(at  which,  as  amateurs,  all  the  other  members  of  the  cast, 
whether  or  not  they  were  likely  to  be  wanted,  thought  it 
necessary  to  assist)  made  them  duly  conspicuous,  and,  as 
the  company  had  assembled  a  quarter  of  an  hour  before  its 
time,  by  so  much  the  more  late  would  they  appear  to  be 
when  at  length  they  should  arrive. 

The  girls  watched  Eric  Dunstable  and  exchanged  smiles. 
Mrs.  Tarpalin,  conscious  of  nerves,  her  own  and  other 
people's,  felt,  as  she  saw  the  sulky  look  deepening  on  his 
face,  that  she  was  extremely  glad  that  Theo  was  late,  and 
quite  unchristianly  glad  to  think  that  David,  when  Eric 
Dunstable  should  see  what  manner  of  person  it  was  that 
the  deUnquent  Theo  had  been  with,  would  shew  himself  to 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  311 

be  of  so  considerable  a  mettle.  She  disliked  Eric  Dunstable 
greatly,  and,  though  she  hoped  she  never  forgot  her  good 
manners,  always  found  it  difficult  to  conceal  her  feelings. 
If  she  had  not  been  so  worried  about  David  she  would  not 
perhaps  have  been  so  irritated  by  the  sulkiness  of  Mr. 
Dunstable.  She  knew  that  his  sulkiness,  which  she  still 
observed  even  after  the  rehearsal  had  begun  and  she  was 
supposed  to  be  giving  her  whole  attention  to  her  part,  was 
itself  an  expression  of  irritation.  But  what  right  had  he  to 
be  irritated  by  Theo's  absence  —  by  Theo's  absence  even 
though  it  should  be  in  company  with  some  one  else?  He 
was  not  engaged  to  Theo.  At  least  she  did  not  think  he 
was.  And  if  he  had  been  engaged  to  her  fifty  times  over 
that  would  n't  have  given  him  the  right  to  be  irritated  — 
or  if  he  were  irritated  to  shew  it.  She  looked  at  the  big, 
handsome,  ill-conditioned  young  man  and  felt  very  angry. 

All  the  same  it  was  rather  naughty  of  Theo,  for,  though 
she  could  find  it  in  her  heart  to  be  glad  that  Theo  had  con- 
trived to  annoy  Eric,  she  had  no  intention  of  letting  her 
make  a  fool  of  David. 

So  It  came  that  when  David  and  Miss  Nevern  appeared, 
half-an-hour  late,  but  in  plenty  of  time  to  take  up  their 
parts,  it  was  quite  obvious  that  they  came  into  an  assem- 
blage of  persons  who,  if  they  had  not  been  talking  of  them, 
had  had  them  very  clearly  in  mind.  The  fact  of  this  seemed 
to  link  them  more  closely  together,  so  that,  if  it  had  mat- 
tered their  being  late,  they  would  have  felt  deliciously 
fellow-culprits. 

It  chanced  that  there  was  a  break  in  the  rehearsal  just 
as  they  came  in.  Frank,  stage-managing  and  acting  too, 
had  sent  for  some  notes  he  had  made  embodying  business 
which  was  not  in  the  script. 

"  No,  heaps  of  time,"  he  said  in  answer  to  their  apologies, 
which  were  addressed  partly  to  him  and  partly  to  their 
hostess  on  the  stage. 

Miss  Nevern  now  saw  Eric  Dunstable  and  shook  hands 
with  him  with  a  "Hullo,  Eric,"  and  turned  back,  laughing. 


312  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

to  David,  to  associate  herself  with  his  explanation  of  how 
he  had  underestimated  distance  and  overestimated  time. 

All  the  girls  looked  at  him,  smiling,  and  Frank  Tarpalin 
punched  him  affectionately  in  the  chest,  and  Mrs.  Tar- 
palin, smiling  at  him  warmly  too,  —  still  from  her  place 
on  the  'stage,'  —  took  this  moment,  as  if  remembering,  to 
make  him  and  Mr.  Dunstable  known  to  each  other. 

She  did,  it  is  true,  introduce  Mr.  Penstephen  to  Mr. 
Dunstable,  but  in  such  a  way  that  she  seemed  to  be  intro- 
ducing Mr.  Dunstable  to  Mr.  Penstephen. 

David>  advancing  a  little,  met  the  eyes  of  his  fellow- 
traveller,  who  inclined  his  head  without  otherwise  moving. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin,  a  prey  perhaps  to  her  irritation,  was  not 
quite  tactful  when  she  added  cordially  that  Mr.  Penstephen 
was  their  leading  man. 

Theo  exchanged  greetings  with  the  other  newcomers, 
with  whom  she  was  acquainted,  and  to  whom  David  was 
now  introduced.  There  was  a  chair  beside  Mr.  Dunstable, 
but  she  took  another,  and  the  young  men  from  Astonbury 
made  a  place  amongst  them  for  David.  A  servant  came 
back  with  the  notes,  and  the  interrupted  rehearsal  was  re- 
sumed and  proceeded.  But  the  mischief  was  done. 

1    Frank  followed  David  into  his  room  that  night. 

"Look  here,"  he  said,  "you  mustn't  mind  him.  No- 
body who  knows  him  minds  him." 

"It  is  n't  that  I  mind  him  exactly,"  said  David. 

"It's  his  manner,"  Frank  said,  "his  perfectly  damnable 
manner.  He's  the  same  with  everybody.  I  told  you, 
did  n't  I?  And  my  mother  did  too.  She  can't  bear  him. 
Everybody  feels  it." 

"It  was  rather  difficult  to  act  with  him,"  David  said. 
[    "I  know.   I  could  see." 

Goodness,  as  they  looked  back  over  the  events  of  the 
day,  everybody  had  been  able  to  see! 

"He  made  it  difficult.  He  seemed  as  if  he  meant  to 
make  it  difficult.  Why  did  he?  "^ 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  313 

David  suddenly  was  asking  him.  For  David  had  re- 
membered as  he  spoke  exactly  how  difficult  Dunstable  had 
made  it  to  act  with  him,  Hastings  and  Marlow  were  sup- 
posed to  be  friends.  You  could  n't  convey  much  idea  of 
friendship  when  a  person  —  the  person  you  are  supposed  to 
be  friends  with  —  looked  at  you  as  if  he  did  n't  see  you. 

"He's  like  that,"  Frank  said,  in  his  anxiety  for  David. 
"He  does  n't  mean  it." 

David  shook  his  head. 

"Not  particularly  —  not  individually,  I  mean.  He's  a 
swine.  He  can't  help  it.  He  was  out  of  temper  to-day. 
Something  had  put  him  out." 

"He  seemed  put  out,"  said  David.  "But  it  was  as  if  I 
had  put  him  out." 

"  If  only  I  had  n't  asked  him  to  act ! "  said  Frank.  "  Good 
Lord,  if  only  I  had  n't!  I  might  have  known!"  He  set  his 
teeth.  "  If  he  can't  behave  himself  to-morrow,  I  '11  tell  him 
we  don't  want  him." 

But  David  would  not  hear  of  that. 

"It  was  Theo,  really,  you  know,  not  you!"  Frank  said 
at  last. 

"MissNevern?" 

"Who  had  put  him  out." 

David  looked  at  him  quickly. 

"  He  did  mean  it,"  Frank  said.  "  I  'm  frantically  ashamed 
of  him.  He  meant  it.  He  was  venting  things  on  you.  But 
it  was  Theo." 


CHAPTER  VI 

Frank's  explanation  —  there  was  this  solace  for  David  — 
could  not  but  be  flattering  to  a  vanity  which  yet  was 
really  very  modest;  but  David  should,  perhaps,  have  taken 
warning.  There  was,  however,  Miss  Nevern  to  reckon  with, 
and  Miss  Nevern  was  staying  in  the  house.  If  there  be 
anything  to  be  said  for  Mr.  Dunstable,  we  may  remind 
ourselves  that  perhaps  this  rankled  — •  that  while  he,  Hast- 
ings (second  fiddle,  anyway),  was  at  White  Alban  and  had 
to  go  back  there,  they.  Young  Marlowand  Kate  Hardcastle 
(first  fiddles),  were  at  Red  Alban,  under  one  roof,  and  free, 
if  they  were  so  minded,  to  continue  their  counterfeit  dally- 
ings,  or  change  mock  love-making  for  love-making  in 
earnest.  There  was  something  to  be  said  for  the  ungracious 
young  man  —  the  more,  perhaps,  by  very  reason  of  his 
ungraciousness  —  and  David  should  have  taken  warning. 
What,  though,  about  Theo? 

Miss  Nevern  shewed  herself  likely  to  go  on  as  she  had 
begun.  She  had  certainly,  as  her  stage-manager  said, 
spared  her  sullen  admirer  nothing  at  the  first  rehearsal. 
There  had  been  David  as  himself  when  there  had  not  been 
David  as  Young  Marlow,  and  since  the  whole  play  had  been 
run  through  —  the  company,  as  had  been  arranged,  dining 
at  Red  Alban  (in  what  they  stood  up  in)  to  admit  for  that 
day  of  a  complete  rehearsal  —  there  had  been  quite  a  great 
deal  of  David  in  both  capacities. 

Theo,  Frank  Tarpalin  said  to  himself,  was  a  little  wretch. 
He  now,  like  his  mother,  looked  forward  to  the  happenings 
of  the  next  fortnight  with  apprehension.  David  had  be- 
haved like  a  brick;  was  a  brick  —  a  very  brick  of  bricks; 
but  human  nature  was  human  nature.  There  was  a  point 
beyond  which  it  was  not  possible  to  endure.  Would  that 
point  be  passed?   Theo  was  the  person  who  ought  to  be 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  315 

spoken  to,  but  Frank  Tarpalin  shrank  for  some  reason  from 
'speaking'  to  Theo.  Perhaps  things  would  be  better  on  the 
morrow.  A  whole  day's  rehearsal  —  morning,  afternoon, 
and  evening  —  was  rather  a  strain.  The  evening  had  been 
worst.  It  was  in  the  evening  that,  when  Marlow,  by  the 
stage-manager's  direction,  had  laid  his  hand  upon  his 
friend  Hastings's  arm,  his  friend  Hastings  had  shaken  it 
off!  There  would  be  no  more  evening  rehearsals  for  the 
present;  no  more  unwieldy  dinners  at  which  Theo  could 
take  advantage,  as  she  had  done  that  night,  of  the  in- 
formality of  the  occasion  to  plant  herself  —  nobody  having 
taken  anybody  else  in  —  between  David  and  one  of  the 
younger  boys,  instead  of  sitting  beside  the  raging  Dunstable 
as  it  was  plain  that  she  had  been  intended  to  do. 

David  had,  indeed,  spent  rather  a  difficult  day.  But, 
howsoever  unwittingly,  he  had  been,  and  he  knew  it,  a 
little  to  blame.  For  he  was  aware  of  Miss  Nevern's  power 
to  make  you  jealous,  and  he  had  not  been  without  some 
sort  of  inkling  that  Eric  Dunstable  was  jealous.  He  had 
borne  Dunstable's  hardly  veiled  enmity,  affecting  not  to 
perceive  it,  but  he  had  taken  no  steps  to  assuage  Dun- 
stable's anger  or  to  allay  his  suspicions.  He  would  try, 
then,  to  be  more  judicious  the  next  day. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  'spoke'  to  Theo.  She  asked  her  help  in 
settling  some  flowers,  and,  all  the  girls  at  once  volunteering 
their  services,  she  set  the  Davenport  and  the  Aylmer  and 
the  Blake  to  work  on  those  in  the  drawing-room,  and  took 
Theo  with  her  up  to  her  own  sitting-room. 

"These  only  want  their  stalks  cut,"  she  said,  "and  a  little 
weeding-out.  They  were  fresh  yesterday.  January  is 
rather  hard  on  flowers  and  Hacket  is  a  tyrant  —  all  good 
gardeners  are.  Theo,  you're  being  very  naughty." 

"Me,  dear  Mrs.  Tarpalin?" 

"You,  dear  Theo,  and  you  know  it  just  as  well  as  I 
do." 


3i6  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Theo  was  all  round  eyes  and  innocence  and  drooping 
mouth. 

"Me?"  she  said  again.    "Dearest  Mrs.  Tarpalin!" 

"You,  dearest  Miss  Nevern.  Yes,  bad  Theo,  you.  Now 
tell  me." 

"She's  going  to  lecture  me,"  said  Miss  Nevern  to  the 
chrysanthemums. 

"You  richly  deserve  that  I  should.  Why  did  you  want 
Eric  Dunstable  to  be  asked  to  act  if  you  were  going  to 
behave  like  this  to  him?" 

Theo  took  refuge  in  "Like  what?" 

"  If  you  '11  just  lift  the  vases  for  me  I  '11  spread  this  under 
them.  Now  we  can  lay  everything  on  the  newspaper.  As 
if  you  did  n't  know,  my  dear." 

"He  should  n't  be  such  a  — ruffian,"  said  Theo,  paus- 
ing for  the  word  she  wanted. 

"But  that's  why  you  like  him." 

Theo  looked  at  her  with  respect. 

"How  did  you  know?" 

"My  dear,  I  don't  pretend  to  like  him  myself,  but  I  can't 
pretend,  either,  that  for  one  moment  I  can  be  indifferent  to 
him  or  even  unconscious  of  him  when  he 's  there.  I  suppose 
that's  how  I  know.  The  more  I  disliked  him,  the  more  trib- 
ute I  should  be  paying  to  some  quality  that  he  has." 

"You  do  see  that  he  has  qualities." 

"Very  grudgingly,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin. 

"  I  've  got  to  find  out  somehow  whether  I  can  bear  him," 
said  Miss  Nevern. 

"But  not  through  somebody  else." 

Miss  Nevern  smiled  and  cut  some  stalks,  shaking  the 
drops  of  water  from  them  first,  and  from  her  fingers  also, 
on  to  the  newspaper. 

"No,  Theo,  you're  being  abominable  and  I  won't  have 
it." 

"He's  a  delightful  boy." 

"That's  why.  No,  that  is  n't  why  at  all.  It  is  n't  only 
because  I  like  him  that  I  won't  have  it.   You're  being 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  317 

extremely  naughty.  Do  you  want  them  at  each  other's 
throats?" 

"It  would  be  rather  exciting,"  said  Theo.  "I  don't 
think  I've  ever  been  actually  fought  over." 

"Well,  it  is  to  stop,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin.  "  I  could  n't  go 
through  another  day  like  yesterday,  and  what's  more,  my 
dear,  I  would  n't.  Now,  Theo,  kiss  me  and  be  a  good  girl." 

Things  were  really  better  after  that.  Theo  was  in  the 
hall  when  Eric  Dunstable  arrived,  and  perhaps  that  helped. 
She  said  "Hullo,  Eric,"  but  quite  differently  from  her 
"Hullo,  Eric!"  of  the  day  before. 

He  said,  "That  you,  Theo?" 

We,  who  may  guess  now  at  Theo,  may  ask  ourselves 
whether  'That'  had  not  equally  been  Theo  the  day  before. 
However,  things  were  better.  Let  this  suffice.  Sufficient 
unto  the  moment,  as  unto  the  day,  the  evil  thereof.  He 
had  arrived  punctually  this  time  —  not  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  too  soon.  But  there  was  still  a  quarter  of  an  hour  to 
spare,  for  the  proprietor  of  the  theatre  had  driven  over  to 
Red  Alban  again  upon  some  matter  connected  with  the 
arrangements  and  was  closeted  with  Frank  in  the  library, 
and  the  rehearsal  was  not  to  begin  till  he  was  gone.  The 
brake  from  Astonbury  was  heard  on  the  drive,  and  Eric  and 
Theo  slipped  out  into  the  garden.  They  strolled  now  where 
she  and  David  had  strolled  before  they  went  for  their  un- 
fortunate walk.  This,  too,  may  have  helped.  Eric  Dun- 
stable certainly  started  the  day  in  better  temper. 

Both  Frank  and  Mrs.  Tarpalin  felt  reassured. 

"You'd  better  sit  next  him  at  luncheon,"  Mrs.  Tarpalin 
whispered  to  Theo.  " It's  bribery,  I  know,  but  in  this  case 
we'll  call  bribery  reward  —  which  in  one  sense  it  is,  a 
merely  anticipated  reward." 

"The  result  justifying  the  means?  You  don't  mind 
sacrificing  me." 

"Ah,  Theo  dear,  I  know  you,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin. 
"You're  very  well  able  to  take  care  of  yourself." 


3i8  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"I'm  not  at  all  sure  that  you  mean  that  for  a  compli- 
ment," said  Theo,  but,  smiling  and  amiable,  she  sat  on  one 
side  of  Mr.  Dunstable  at  luncheon,  and  Emma  Blake  on  the 
other,  and  the  afternoon  with  but  some  trifling  restiveness 
passed  smoothly  also. 

David,  writing  to  his  mother  that  evening,  was  able  to 
tell  her  how  much  he  was  enjoying  himself.  Partly  because 
he  could  not  have  done  this  unreservedly  the  day  before, 
he  had  sent  her  a  post-card  only,  reporting  his  safe  arrival. 
Now  he  wrote  a  full  and  very  cheerful  letter  giving  an  ac- 
count of  himself  and  his  surroundings.  He  dwelt  most,  it 
would  perhaps  be  observable,  upon  the  first  and  third  days 
of  his  stay  —  told  her  of  Red  Alban  with  its  friendly  at- 
mosphere, his  delightful  hosts  and  the  welcome  they  had 
given  him,  the  pleasant  party  in  the  house,  gave  some  de- 
scription of  the  girls  (giving  prominence,  it  is  likely,  to 
that  one  of  them  who  stood  out  for  him  from  the  rest),  and 
told  of  the  progress  made  at  that  day's  rehearsals. 

"  It 's  the  jolliest  house  to  stay  in.  You  do  exactly  as  you 
like.  Nobody  bothers  you  about  anything.  I  am  enjoying 
myself  awfully." 

He  did  not  mention  the  allusions  of  both  his  host  and  his 
hostess  to  Ettringham,  or  even  say  that  Mrs.  Tarpalin  had 
been  at  school  with  Lady  Penstephen.  Something  uncom- 
fortable had  hung  about  the  moments  connected  with  those 
topics,  and  an  obscure  instinct  may  have  told  him  to  avoid 
them.  But  he  gave  a  casual  line  or  two  to  Mr.  Dunstable, 
and  saw  no  reason  for  not  saying  that  he  did  not  like  him. 
"However,"  he  wrote,  dismissing  the  subject,  "he  is  stay- 
ing at  White  Alban,  I  'm  glad  to  say,  not  Red,  so  as  a  dis- 
turbing influence  he's  only  here  part  of  the  time,  and  we 
manage  to  keep  the  peace." 

His  letter  reached  Cheyne  Walk  by  what  was  called  the 
second  post,  and  was  actually,  where  posts  were  frequent, 
the  third  or  fourth.   It  found  her  pale  and  left  her  not  less 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  319 

pale,  when  she  had  read  it  and  passed  it  on  to  his  father. 
She  was  getting  through  the  days  and  had  not  shewn 
David's  father  her  heart.  To  what  use?  She  was  not  very 
well,  and  was  supposed  to  be  missing  David.  She  had  been 
supposed  only  to  be  missing  David  when  she  came  back 
from  her  strange  afternoon  in  Kensington  Gardens.  She 
had  left  the  house  laughing  and  had  returned  to  it  having 
wept.  That  was  why. 

"He  seems  to  be  enjoying  himself,"  John  said,  when  he 
had  read  the  letter  through. 

Yes,  he  was  undoubtedly  enjoying  himself,  but  she  knew 
now,  as  well  as  if  she  had  been  told,  how  Lady  Harbing- 
ton's  blow  was  destined  to  be  struck.  Her  intuition  gave 
her  exact  values  and  proportions.  She  was  prepared,  and 
knew  almost,  though  not  quite,  what  she  would  say  to 
David  when  he  came  back  to  her  with  knowledge  but  not 
reproach  in  his  eyes.  It  is  significant  of  her  deep  under- 
standing of  him  that  she  knew  there  would  be  no  reproach. 
The  reproaches  would  be,  as  they  always  had  been,  from 
herself  to  herself. 

She  wrote  him  a  long  cheerful  letter  in  answer.  There 
were  reticences  in  her  letter  as  in  his,  though,  like  all  her 
letters  to  him  and  to  his  father,  this  one  was  circumstantial 
as  a  diary.  Without  any  literary  equipment  she  had  the 
rare  secret  of  the  'satisfactory'  letter  —  the  letter  which 
tells  you  all  you  want  to  know,  and  conjures  up  pictures  of 
familiar  intimate  things.  She  took  up  her  count  from  the 
moment  at  which  they  parted;  told  him  that  she  had  sat 
—  actually  sat,  the  day  was  so  warm  —  for  quite  a  long 
time  in  Kensington  Gardens  after  seeing  him  off.  There 
had  been  a  very  beautiful  sunset  with  that  sort  of  rays 
which,  from  association  with  foreign  picture  galleries,  they 
both  knew  as  'Annunciations.'  She  hoped  he  had  seen  it 
from  the  train.  She  had  gone  back  to  Cheyne  Walk  then, 
taking  a  hansom  in  Kensington  Gore,  and  had  found  tea 
just  coming  in  —  that  sort  of  letter.  She  commented  on 
all  that  he  told  her,  rallied  him  on  his  obvious  admiration 


320  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

of  his  Kate  Hardcastle,  and  only  at  the  end  touched  on 
what  she  knew  to  be  vital  (though  he  did  not)  in  his  letter 
to  her. 

Let  him,  in  the  case  of  the  one  member  of  the  company 
with  whom  he  found  it  difficult  to  get  on,  avoid  friction  as 
far  as  possible.  She  had  no  experience  of  theatricals,  but 
could  conceive  that  the  conditions  made  for  little  irrita- 
tions. Peace  was  so  fragile  a  thing.  There  had  to  be  give 
and  take.  "Give  good,  David,  and  take  evil  gently."  She 
was  preaching  him  the  gospel  of  the  soft  answer  that 
turneth  away  wrath. 

So  she  wrote  to  him  hopefully,  but  in  her  heart  she  had 
no  hope.  For  to  her,  whom  life  had  struck  at  so  relent- 
lessly, it  was  not  and  could  not  be  for  nothing  that  the  one 
person  who  was  not  friendly  to  him  should  '  chance '  to  be 
staying  at  White  Alban.  Useless  then  to  write  this?  Use- 
less. Yet  on  the  off  chance,  as  it  were,  of  averting  catas- 
trophe she  wrote  it,  and  vowed  to  herself  and  to  the  powers 
that  be  that  if  he  should  be  returned  to  her  unenlightened, 
if  for  once  fate  sparing  him  should  spare  her,  she  would  face 
uncertainties  no  longer,  but  lay  his  case  and  hers  frankly 
and  fully  before  him.    >- 

Thus  she  was  able  to  preserve  not  only  her  counsel,  and 
go  on  seeming  only  to  be  missing  him,  but  her  sanity  also. 
Thus  she  worked  off  some  of  her  misery  and  felt  better. 
To  his  postscript,  "  I  hope  you  still  think  of  coming  down," 
she  made  no  answer. 

David,  when  her  letter  reached  him,  was  a  little  puzzled 
by  her  exhortations  —  the  more  so  that  the  day  and  a  half 
that  had  elapsed,  between  the  writing  of  his  own  letter  and 
the  arrival  of  her  reply  to  it,  had  produced  conditions  which 
gave  what  she  said  an  added  point.  The  Hastings  of  the 
cast  had  become  increasingly  hostile  to  the  Marlow,  the 
Eric  Dunstable  of  the  meals  and  the  intervals  generally, 
to  the  David  Penstephen.  It  was  as  if  his  mother  divined 
that  there  might  be  a  real  hostility.  And  there  seemed  to 
be  now  a  hostility  which  was  very  real,  indeed.    It  dis- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  321 

tressed  David  more  almost  than  it  angered  him.  But  there 
were  times  when  it  angered  him  too.  How  did  his  mother 
know,  or  what  had  made  her  think  that  this  might  happen? 
He  looked  at  Dunstable  sometimes  and  wondered  what 
went  on  behind  the  unfriendly  face.  He  knew  that  Dun- 
stable's conduct  was  reacting  upon  Miss  Nevern.  Miss 
Nevern,  he  could  not  fail  to  see,  had  turned  once  more  to 
him,  David;  and  Dunstable  was  jealous.  It  was  now,  per- 
haps, —  though  it  was  not  David  who  thought  this,  — 
that  Theo  began  to  be  deliberately  mischievous.  .  .  . 

Everybody  was  conscious  of  the  overcharged  state  of  the 
atmosphere.  An  explosion  seemed  imminent.  The  girls 
were  all  watching;  the  boys  even;  the  Astonbury  contin- 
gent. There  were  no  factions,  for  every  one  was  on  David's 
side.    . 

The  girls  said  to  each  other,  "Mr.  Dunstable  really 
w/"  —  hating  him,  yet  because  they  hated  him,  secretly 
attracted  too  —  and  therein,  perhaps,  throwing  some  sort 
of  light  for  us,  howsoever  dim  it  might  be,  upon  Theo  and 
her  attitude.  The  boys  kept  out  of  his  way,  and  laughed  at 
him  as  much  as  they  dared.  They  moved  away  sometimes 
when  he  came  near  them. 

The  young  men  from  Astonbury  spoke  to  him  as  little 
as  possible,  and  spoke  of  him  as  Offensive:  A  Poisonous 
Feller. 

Mr.  Dunstable  in  short  was  not  popular,  and  David, 
who  had  begun  by  incurring  his  displeasure,  was;  and 
Theo  Nevern,  who  had  started  the  whole  thing  by  her 
thoughtlessness,  —  or  perhaps  not  by  anything  of  the  sort, 
—  was  being  increasingly  provoking. 

"Theo!"  Mrs.  Tarpalin  said. 

"I  know,"  said  Theo. 

"Then,  Theo!"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin  sharply. 

But  Theo  was  out  of  hand.  ' 

"I've  a  good  mind  to  put  off  the  performance  alto- 
gether," said  Mrs.  Tarpalin. 


322  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

And  then  Theo  surprised  her  by  saying  plaintively  that 
she  half  wished  she  would. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  said  no  more  then,  but  later  she  exchanged 
exasperated  looks  with  her  son. 

"I  shall  have  to  speak  to  Eric,"  she  said. 

"Shall  I  speak  to  him?"  said  Frank.  "Shall  I  just  tell 
him  this  can't  go  on?  Why  should  it  go  on?  I  could  get 
another  Hastings.  Merton  could  play  Hastings,  and  I 
could  get  some  one  else  for  Diggory.  Why  on  earth  should 
we  put  up  with  Eric?" 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  did  not  answer  this.  "I've  threatened 
Theo,"  she  said,  "that  we'll  give  up  these  theatricals  once 
for  all  if  she  goes  on  making  trouble." 

"Oh,  you  couldn't  do  that,"  said  Frank  quickly. 
"Half  the  seats  are  sold.  You  absolutely  could  n't.  Think 
of  old  Harrowby.  Besides,  there's  the  Hospital.  Besides, 
we're  jolly  well  not  going  to  give  up  anything  just  on 
Eric's  account." 

"It  is  Theo,  you  know,"  Mrs.  Tarpalin  said.  "I  have 
spoken  to  her  twice." 

"  I  know,"  said  Frank.  "What  the  dickens  she's  up  to! 
It  certainly  is  n't  Penstephen's  fault." 

"  No,  indeed  it  is  n't,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin  warmly.  "  I  'm 
full  of  admiration  for  him.  I  think  his  forbearance  is  per- 
fectly wonderful." 

"Well,  shall  I  speak  to  Eric?" 

"No,  no;  that  would  n't  do.  That  would  mean  a  row  at 
once,  and  it's  just  a  row  that  I  want  to  avoid.  If  anybody 
does,  I  will.   I  'd  better,  I  suppose.  I  think  I  will." 

But  she  did  not. 

And  David  knew  that  they  were  all  watching.  The  re- 
hearsals were  now  a  strain  upon  his  nerves.  If  his  brief 
acquaintance  with  Miss  Nevern  had  not  enabled  him  to 
understand  something  of  the  reason  for  the  grudge  which 
Dunstable  bore  him,  he  must,  he  thought,  have  given  up 
his  part.  This,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  knowledge  that 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  323 

the  sympathies  of  the  company  were  with  him,  on  the 
other,  combined  —  opposed  reasons  as  in  a  sense  they 
were!  —  to  sustain  him. 

That  night,  after  a  particularly  trying  day,  both  Colo- 
nel and  Mrs.  Tarpalin  took  him  aside  to  thank  him  for 
what  each  of  them  called  his  perfectly  splendid  perform- 
ance, but  what  he  knew,  with  a  flush  of  gratitude  for  both 
in  turn,  meant  something  else.  They  knew  that  he  was 
trying  to  keep  the  peace.  They  wanted  him  to  know  that 
they  knew,  and  that  they  appreciated  his  efforts. 

"  I  don't  know  what  we  should  do  without  you,"  Colonel 
Tarpalin  said. 

"And  you've  anything  but  an  easy  part,"  was  Mrs. 
Tarpalin's  comment. 

"  I  like  that  boy  more  and  more,"  Mrs.  Tarpalin  said  to 
Frank,  and  Frank  told  David. 

Somehow,  David  said  to  himself  before  he  fell  asleep, 
somehow,  —  however  difficult  it  should  prove,  —  just 
somehow,  he  would  contrive  to  carry  the  fragile  thing 
called  peace  through  to  the  end. 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  next  day  there  was  no  rehearsal.  Frank  Tarpalin  had 
said  that  his  company  must  have  exercise  and  air.  His 
company,  nothing  loth,  had  agreed  that  it  must  have  exer- 
cise and  air.  Mrs.  Tarpalin  said  that  she  for  her  part  had 
said  so  all  along. 

So  they  all  spent  a  delightful  day  of  idleness,  and  even 
put  the  play  out  of  their  minds.  Eric  Dunstable  was  con- 
nected with  the  play,  and  they  certainly  all  wanted  to  put 
him  out  of  their  minds.  Extraordinary  the  difference  his 
absence  made!  Mrs.  Tarpalin  went  about  the  house  hum- 
ming In  the  Gloaming  (a  survival),  or  The  Miller  and  the 
Maid,  or  For  Ever  and  For  Ever.  A  weight  seemed  to  be 
lifted  from  every  one's  mind.  The  boys  'ragged'  (as  we 
should  say  now)  on  the  lawn.  The  girls  put  on  their  boots 
early  and  ragged  with  them.  The  ragging  turned  into  a 
game  of  rounders  in  which  even  Colonel  Tarpalin  joined. 
Theo  became  normal  at  once  —  if  Theo  could  be  said  ever 
to  be  quite  normal  —  and  devoted  herself  to  her  host. 
\-    "Goodness,  what  children,"  Mrs.  Tarpalin  said. 

She  had  come  out  from  her  hummings  to  know  what 
they  all  wanted  to  do.  There  had  been  talk  at  breakfast, 
but  nothing  settled.  She  stood  on  the  path,  her  laces  flut- 
tering, and  shaded  the  sun  from  her  eyes  with  one  of  her 
small  fat  hands. 

"Now,  attend  to  me,  please.  I've  my  housekeeping  to 
think  of  and  I  must  know  what  to  order.  Is  it  to  be  the 
big  waggonette  and  a  picnic  luncheon,  or  Shrewsbury  by 
train  and  luncheon  at  the  William  and  Mary,  or  what?  I 
want  to  shew  Mr.  Penstephen  something  of  the  country. 
He  has  n't  been  here  before  and  he  must  n't  go  back  to 
London  and  say  that  we  shewed  him  nothing.  Now,  tell 
me.  No,  put  it  to  the  vote." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  325 

The  big  waggonette  carried  the  day. 

"Very  well,  we'll  start  in  about  an  hour.  Will  that  suit 
you  all?  Half- past  eleven,  then.  And,  like  dear  people,  be 
ready.  No,  indeed,  I  won't  play  rounders!" 

She  went  back  to  the  house  humming  again. 

The  day  was  a  holiday,  nothing  less;  but  a  holiday  not 
from  work,  but  from  a  person. 

Colonel  Tarpalin  with  Theo  beside  him  drove  the  wag- 
gonette, and  Frank  the  supplementary  dog-cart.  It  was 
Mrs.  Tarpalin  who  suggested  that  her  husband  should 
drive,  perhaps  because  she  knew  that  he  would  then  in- 
vite Theo  to  the  box  seat.  David  she  placed  next  to  her- 
self. But  she  had  not,  indeed,  any  fear  of  Theo  that  day. 
Everybody  was  going  to  be  good. 

David  experienced  again  the  sense  of  well-being  that 
had  marked  the  day  of  his  arrival.  He  had,  once  more,  not 
a  care  in  the  world.  Just  occasionally  the  thought  of  Dun- 
stable came  to  remind  him  that  the  respite  of  the  pleasant 
hours  was  but  temporary  —  a  marking  of  time  —  but  his 
spirits  were  too  buoyant  to  be  greatly  affected  by  this. 
Every  moment  took  him  farther,  he  knew,  from  White 
Alban,  where  the  disturber  of  his  peace  might  be  thought  of 
as  anchored  for  that  day  at  least.  Nothing,  then,  marred 
the  hours. 

In  later  years,  when  David  looked  back,  this  picnic  in 
the  hills  stood  out  from  more  important  events.  It  always 
seemed  to  him  to  mark  the  end  of  his  boyhood.  On  the 
other  side  of  it  were  quite  a  number  of  things,  connected  or 
disconnected,  which  never  entirely  came  over  to  this  side 
of  it  —  things  as  connected,  say,  as  books  and  pictures 
and  plays,  and  as  disconnected  as  a  certain  sort  of  match- 
box sold  then  in  the  streets,  and  the  songs  which  Mrs.  Tar- 
palin had  sung  and  did  hum.  Actually,  of  course,  the  line 
was  not  so  arbitrary.   People  continued  to  read  Ouida,  to 


326  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

admire  " Little  Mrs.  Gamp,"  and  to  be  satisfied  with  what 
were  known  as  Pally  Roy'l  farces  for  many  years  after  Mrs. 
Tarpalin's  picnic;  the  elastic-flapped  box  of  wax  matches 
continued  to  be  sold  and  bought,  and  there  were  singers 
for  songs  addressed  to  Darlings  —  Oh,  my  darling!  —  and 
concerned  with  hearts  Crushed  with  Longing,  or  Cursed 
with  Thoughts ;  or  songs  telling  of  Silver  Rivers  and  Storms 
of  Fate :  or,  very  pleasantly,  of  Millers  and  Maids.  But  the 
fashion  of  these,  with  the  photographs  of  the  Professional 
Beauties  of  then  (and  now),  and  Bishops  (of  then),  and 
Actresses  (of  then),  in  the  shop  windows,  belonged  to 
David's  boyhood;  and  if  he  would  have  us  believe  that  on 
a  particular  day  a  clean  sweep  was  made  of  the  pictures  of 
the  nuns  with  raised  eyes,  and  ladies  beside  tea-tables,  or 
ladies  in  snow-storms,  it  is  only  that  these  at  some  time  or 
other  undoubtedly  did  give  place  to  others,  and  that  these 
are  sacred  to  the  days  before  the  picnic,  when  he  was  still 
a  schoolboy  and  gave  them  his  ardent  worship. 

Yes,  when  David  looked  back.  .  .  . 

No  motors  then,  no  tubes  or  taxis;  no  telephones;  no 
aeroplanes  or  submarines  —  and  no  apparent  need  for  any 
one  of  these  or  of  many  other  of  Time's  many  inventions. 
And,  for  David,  hardly  anybody  dead.  Did  nobody  die 
when  you  and  the  world  were  younger?  Only  people  like 
Sir  Joseph  and  his  son,  it  seemed;  people  whom  you  did  n't 
know,  or  did  n't  know  well;  very  few  people  according  to 
David  —  very  few  that  you  cared  for. 

Wonderful  days,  the  days  of  the  years  before  Mrs.  Tar- 
palin's picnic  in  the  hills.  All  the  people  who  mattered  were 
alive  then  —  and  for  many  years  after :  Nelly  Farren, 
Darwin,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson. 

David's  heart  often  ached  when  he  looked  back. 

And  the  picnic  which  made  the  dividing  line?  Nothing 
particular  about  this  picnic  —  nothing  much,  perhaps,  in 
the  way  of  a  picnic  —  nothing  happened  at  it,  anyway,  to 
mark  it  from  any  other.   A  hostess  to  amuse  her  guests 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  327 

takes  them  up  a  hill  to  eat  their  mid-day  meal  out  of  doors 
and  admire  the  view.  If  we  picture  them  rightly  we  shall 
see  them  as  a  Punch  drawing  by  du  Maurier,  in  the  gar- 
ments of  the  early  eighties,  with  David  (for  his  good  looks) 
and  Theo  (for  hers)  easily  recognisable.  Colonel  Tarpalin, 
Mrs.  Tarpalin,  Frank,  Welwyn,  the  boys  —  we  may  see 
them  all  as  du  Mauriers. 

The  luncheon  was  excellent.  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  who  had  so 
often  to  arrange  shooting  luncheons,  understood  exactly 
what  you  liked  to  eat  out  of  doors :  what  you  liked  hot  and 
what  you  liked  cold;  what  you  liked  to  drink,  were  you 
man,  matron,  or  maid;  and  nothing  was  forgotten. 

David  wished  his  mother  could  see  the  view  over  which 
his  eyes  ranged. 

"Yes,  Shropshire  where  you  're  looking,"  Frank  told  him 
as  he  put  his  questions.  "Now,  turn.  Wales.  What,  never 
been  to  Wales?  This  must  be  seen  to,  my  son." 

David  would  have  liked  to  dip  down  into  the  rich  valley 
then  and  there. 

"We'll  do  a  walking  tour,  you  and  I,  some  day,  shall 
we?" 

"You  may  safely  promise,  Mr.  Penstephen,"  Mrs.  Tar- 
palin said  to  him  —  "if  Frank's  in  it,  it  will  not  be  a  walk- 
ing tour." 

"Well,  a  driving  tour,"  said  Frank.  "By  Jove,  we  will. 
Dolgelly,  Barmouth  —  there  's  a  road  for  you !  You  '11 
find  it  difficult  to  beat  with  all  your  travelling!  Yes,  and 
before  that  the  country  up  in  the  hills  by  Dinas  Mawddy, 
or  by  Machynlleth.  By  Jove,  David  Penstephen,  we  will." 

"We  will,"  said  David,  smiUng. 

"Isn't  it  horrid  to  hear  them  arranging  what  they're 
going  to  do?"  said  Emma  Blake  to  Lucy  Aylmer.  "Why 
can't  we  go  walking  tours  or  driving  tours!" 

"We  will,"  said  Theo.   "Why  should  n't  we?" 
'^  So  they  chattered  happily.  A  marking  of  time! 

After  luncheon  the  party  broke  up  in  twos  and  threes. 


328  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Frank  Tarpalin  and  Theo,  David  and  Lucy  Aylmer,  went 
together  for  a  walk;  the  other  young  people  disposed  of 
themselves  in  one  way  or  another,  and  Colonel  and  Mrs. 
Tarpalin  seized  the  opportunity  of  calling  on  some  ac- 
quaintances in  the  neighbourhood,  with  whom  they  ex- 
changed visits  about  once  a  year.  At  four  o'clock  the  party 
reassembled  and  drove  home,  stopping  for  tea,  on  the  way, 
at  an  inn  where,  by  the  forethought  of  their  hostess  as  they 
passed  it  that  morning,  the  meal  had  been  ordered  to  await 
them.  Nothing  happened  at  tea.  What  should  happen? 
There  were  cakes  and  there  was  home-made  bread,  the 
sort  of  bread  that  you  cannot  get  now  for  money,  and  that 
you  can  get  very  seldom  for  love.  There  were  home-made 
jams.  Nothing  happened  that  evening,  when  they  danced 
and  when  the  girls  of  the  party  all  fell  in  love  with  David 
once  more  for  his  dancing.  Nothing  happened  the  next 
day  —  which  was  Sunday.  There  was  church ;  there  was 
Sunday  beef;  there  were  walks;  there  was  music  in  the 
evening.  Mrs.  Tarpalin  played  Mendelssohn  —  some  of 
the  Songs  without  Words;  Emma  Blake,  Chopin  —  Noc- 
turnes, a  Prelude  or  two.  Lucy  Aylmer  sang  Absent  yet 
Present  (with  perfect  modesty),  and  Welwyn  The  Midship- 
mite,  and,  pressed  for  something  with  a  chorus.  We  'II  all 
go  a-hunting  to-day. 

David  denied  that  he  sang.  But  he  had  sung  at  Glee 
Club  concerts  at  school,  and  Frank  Tarpalin  was  there  to 
give  him  away.  He  sang  Way  down  upon  the  Suwanee  River ^ 
and  the  chorus  was  taken  up  by  the  rest  —  Mrs.  Tarpalin 
singing  out  of  tune  under  the  impression  that  she  was  sing- 
ing second.  Then  he  gave  Wrap  me  up  in  my  old  Stable 
Jacket,  and  Theo  Nevern  looked  at  him. 

"  Wrap  me  up  in  my  old  stable  jacket 
And  say  a  poor  buffer  lies  low,  lies  low, 
And  six  stalwart  lancers  shall  carry  me 
With  steps  solemn,  silent,  and  slow." 

To  think  of  the  young  singer  lying  low  gave  you  a  deli- 
cious stab  at  your  heart.   It  must  be  you  only  who  min- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  329 

istered  to  him.  You  must  be  the  one  to  hold  the  cup  to  the 
clean  young  lips,  to  lay  a  cool  hand  on  the  burning  fore- 
head and  smooth  the  hair  back  —  with  such  tenderness  as 
you  knew  that  you  alone  had  it  in  you  to  apply.  It  must 
be  you  who  bent  over  him,  straining  to  catch  the  failing 
words;  you,  when  the  young  spirit  fled,  who  closed  the 
fading  eyes.  .  .  . 

You  also  wanted  to  be  one  of  the  six  stalwart  lancers  who 
carried  him.  .  .  . 

And  you  wanted  to  love  them  too  for  loving  him.  .  .  . 

Mrs.  Tarpalin,  pleasantly  moved,  herself,  in  a  middle- 
aged  way,  was  not  certain  that,  when  Theo  for  two  whole 
days  had  been  so  good,  it  had  been  wise  to  press  the  al- 
ready sufficiently  disturbing  David  to  sing.  The  evening 
of  the  second  day  of  respite  closed  on  a  dangerous  note  of 
sentiment. 

Theo  Nevern  was  really  rather  unaccountable.  For  Eric 
Dunstable,  who  was  the  blind  agent  of  fate,  there  is  less 
need  to  account.  We  may  suppose  him  in  his  ungracious 
way  to  be  indeed  suffering  acutely,  and  be  sorry  for  him  if 
we  can.  Theo  could  make  you  jealous  we  know,  and  Theo 
had  made  him  desperately  jealous.  He  had  nothing  else 
against  David  when  he  met  him,  it  is  certain.  We  may 
doubt  whether  he  was  conscious  of  David  in  the  railway 
carriage.  He  was  a  selfish  traveller,  that  is  all.  David's 
dislike  of  him  then  had  been  instinctive,  perhaps  even  in 
a  measure  prophetic.  He  knew  nothing  of  David  till  the 
day  of  the  picnic,  when,  at  a  loose  end  at  White  Alban,  he 
went  out  for  a  drive  with  his  aunt.  Lady  Harbington,  and 
the  carriage  took  Astonbury  on  its  way  home. 

It  chanced  that  the  bills  announcing  the  coming  theat- 
ricals were  out  that  day,  and  as  they  passed  the  theatre 
they  saw  them.  Now,  Mr.  Dunstable  was  never  ill-tem- 
pered with  his  great  relation,  but  Lady  Harbington,  during 
this  drive,  was  finding  some  little  difficulty  in  entertaining 
him.  She  had  left  Miss  Dunstable,  her  companion  and  dis- 


330  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

tant  connection,  at  home  that  day,  because  she  knew  that 
Miss  Dunstable  (who  was  certainly  very  tiresome)  bored 
him.  Miss  Dunstable,  whom  we  may  remember  as  having 
been  with  her  at  Brussels  and  Homburg,  was  his  connec- 
tion also,  but  he  allowed  himself  to  shew  occasional  ill- 
temper  to  her. 

Lady  Harbington  had  not  changed  very  materially  in 
the  nine  or  ten  years  which  had  turned  David  from  a  little 
boy  into  a  young  man.  She  was  a  little  more  rouged,  per- 
haps, than  formerly,  but  was  not  very  perceptibly  older. 
Allowing  for  alterations  in  the  fashions  we  see  her  in  much 
the  same  sort  of  clothes.  She  still  wore  cuffs,  for  instance, 
fastened  with  large  jet  solitaires  on  which  there  was  a  de- 
vice in  diamonds.  She  wore  the  same  heavy  bracelets  and 
brooches.  She  did  not  (in  the  summer)  wear  primrose- 
coloured  gloves  or  carry  quite  the  same  sort  of  parasol,  but 
she  had  never  got  beyond  shining  kid  as  a  covering  for  her 
hands,  and  when  she  used  a  parasol  she  carried  it  in  a  way 
peculiar  to  the  day  when  parasols  had  the  long  silk  fringes 
of  the  sixties  and  seventies. 

"Oh,  there,"  she  said,  hoping  to  interest  her  rather  dif- 
ficult nephew,  "is  the  notice  of  your  performance.  Would 
you  like  to  stop  and  look  at  it?" 

Mr.  Dunstable  did  not  particularly  want  to  stop,  but 
his  aunt  had  called  to  the  footman  and  given  her  direction. 
There  was  a  bill  on  one  of  the  pillars  of  the  portico.  Lady 
Harbington  and  her  nephew  could  read  this  from  the  car- 
riage. It  announced  that  on  the  evening  of  the  19th  Jan- 
uary, under  the  Distinguished  Patronage  of  a  list  of  names 
which  included  that  of  the  august  lady  who  now  read  it, 
there  would  be  given  a  Performance  of  Oliver  Goldsmith's 
Comedy,  She  Stoops  to  Co7iquer,  in  aid  of  the  funds  of  the 
Astonbury  Hospital.  The  Following  Ladies  and  Gentle- 
men were  kindly  giving  their  Services. 

Lady  Harbington,  reading  half  aloud,  paused  at  David's 
name. 

"  Penstephen,"  she  said. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  33i 

"He  plays  Young  Marlow,"  said  her  nephew. 

*'I  wonder  what  Penstephen,"  she  said,  thoughtfully, 
but  also  rather  absently. 

"I  don't  know.  A  school-fellow  of  Frank  Tarpalin's.  He 
played  the  part  in  the  school  theatricals.  A  son  of  Sir 
Somebody  Penstephen,  I  believe." 

"The  Ettringham  Penstephens,  then.  I  don't  know  that 
there  are  any  others.  Really.  A  son  of  John  Penstephen, 
the  present  man." 

"Yes,  that's  it.  Sir  John  Penstephen.  I  forget  who  said 
so." 

"Really.  A  son  of  John  Penstephen.  There  were  two 
children,  I  think,  and  one  of  them  was  a  boy.  Yes,  a  boy 
and  a  girl,  I  fancy.    Really!   A  son  of  John  Penstephen!" 

"Do  you  know  him?" 

"  I  know  all  about  him,"  said  Lady  Harbington,  and  said 
no  more  just  then. 

But  presently  she  was  pouring  out  her  story,  and,  for  the 
duration  at  least  of  the  rest  of  the  drive,  she  found  no  dif- 
ficulty in  entertaining  her  difficult  nephew. 

"The  manager  quite  saw,"  she  said.  "  I  was  very  firm. 
I  knew  Joseph  Penstephen's  father,  you  see,  this  man's 
uncle,  and  the  whole  circumstances  —  though  for  that 
matter  it  was  an  open  scandal  and  everybody  knew.  They 
had,  of  course,  to  live  abroad." 

"And  they  went?" 

"At  once,"  said  Lady  Harbington. 

"And  that  wasn't  all,"  she  added,  and  proceeded  to 
tell  him  of  the  rescue  of  Katinka. 

"The  father  behaved  altogether  properly  and  was  very 
grateful  to  me,  poor  man,  for  telling  him.  Such  a  dangerous 
influence  for  a  young  girl.  I  dare  say  she  would  never  have 
got  over  it.  I  was  not,  I  may  say,  so  pleased  with  the  girl 
herself." 

Her  nephew's  eyebrows  questioned,  perhaps. 

"Oh,  she  had  attached  herself  to  the  children  and  in- 
deed to  the  children's  mother  too,  who  I  dare  say  had  got 


332  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

round  her.  She,  the  —  er  —  the  children's  mother,  was 
not,  I  am  bound  to  say,  the  sort  of  woman  —  to  look  at  — 
that  you'd  quite  expect.  She  was  a  quiet-looking  person 
—  rather  well-bred  in  appearance  —  and  not,  I  believe, 
badly  born.  But  that,  as  I  said  to  Harriet  Dunstable,  only 
made  it  so  much  the  worse.  It  was  one  of  those  distressing 
cases  which  oblige  one  to  take  a  firm  stand." 

"And  this  is  the  son." 

"Yes,  the  natural  son.  There  was  another,  I  think,  born 
after  they  married.  Oh,  yes,  they  married  eventually.  You 
see  the  cousin  died  and  John  succeeded,  so  I  suppose  they 
thought  it  time  to  gather  up  what  shreds  of  respectability 
were  left  to  them,  and  make  at  least  a  show  of  decency  by 
putting  things  right  in  the  sight  of  the  law." 

"What  people!"  was  Eric  Dunstable's  comment,  and  it 
must  be  conceded  that  the  case  for  David's  family,  as  it 
was  put  by  the  great  lady  who  sat  so  complacently  in  judg- 
ment upon  it,  did  not  make  for  admiration. 

That  was  all,  just  then. 

But  Eric  Dunstable  began  to  think,  and  Eric  Dunstable 
was  already  very  sore. 

He  heard  his  aunt  telling  her  companion  when  she  got 
home,  and  Miss  Dunstable,  tumbling  over  herself  to  show 
exactly  the  right  sort  of  sympathetic  interest,  making  her 
inept  exclamations  and  remarks. 

"Down  here!"  Miss  Dunstable  said.  "Down  here! 
You  don't  say  so!" 

"I  am  saying  so.   I'm  telling  you." 

"  I  know,  dear,  but  Astonbury,  and  acting  in  these  very 
theatricals!" 

"V/ell,  whynot?" 

"But  with  you  as  one  of  the  patronesses." 

Miss  Dunstable  seemed  to  think  Lady  Harbington's 
sacred  name  profaned. 

"Well,  my  goodness,  Harriet,  the  wretched  young  man's 
done  nothing." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  333 

"No,  dear,  I  know,  but  I  think  you  ought  to  have  been 
told.  You  might  n't  have  quite  Hked  it.  I  don't  think  it  was 
quite  right  of  Mrs.  Tarpalin.  Of  course,  as  you  say,  one 
would  n't  condemn  the  poor  young  man;  but  with  such  a 
history — " 

Miss  Dunstable,  who  was  much  more  than  ten  years 
older  than  when  we  caught  our  last  glimpse  of  her  at  Hom- 
burg,  was  like  a  dog  with  a  bone. 

Lady  Harbington  said,  "Stuff!"  —  and  went  up  to  her 
room  to  the  hands  of  her  two  maids,  and  Miss  Dunstable 
took  her  bone  to  Eric. 

"Your  aunt  is  almost  too  charitable,"  she  said.  "She's 
so  unfailingly  kind,  is  n't  she!  But  these  people  defied 
opinion.  You  can't  do  that  with  impunity,  and  the  in- 
nocent have  always  to  suffer  for  the  guilty.  I  can't  think 
it  quite  right  of  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  though  your  aunt  is  her 
husband's  tenant." 

Eric  Dunstable,  almost  as  unceremoniously  as  Lady 
Harbington  herself,  said,  "  Rot ! "  —  the  masculine  equiva- 
lent, perhaps,  for  her  more  elegant  "Stuff." 

But  Miss  Dunstable,  who  was  accustomed  to  being 
snubbed,  was,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  impervious  to 
snubbings.  She  worried  away  at  her  bone,  and  in  the  end 
succeeded  in  detaching  something  from  its  apparent  bare- 
ness. 

"What  I  chiefly  feel  is  that  it  is  n't  fair  on  the  others. 
Theatricals  are  what  I  call  such  intimate  things.  One 
really  wonders  whether  they  quite  know." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  asked  Eric. 

"Well,  people  are  so  much  thrown  together  in  theatricals 
—  meeting  every  day  for  rehearsals  and  all  that,  and  even 
having  to  make  love  to  each  other,  though  I  believe,  of 
course,  that  on  the  stage  itself  they  don't  really  —  well, 
really  kiss.  Still,  even  to  pretend  to.  And  if  there  were 
any  entanglements,  how  dreadful  it  would  be  —  the 
young  man  so  —  so  out  of  the  question!  I  really  do 
think—" 


334  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

Eric  Dunstable  was  angry  enough  to  be  able  to  snub 
still. 

'  *  What  absolute  nonsense ! "  he  said .  ' '  Why,  he 's  a  boy. 
Has  n't  left  school  yet.  A  mere  schoolboy." 

"He  must  be  growing  up,"  said  Miss  Dunstable.  "And 
if  he's  old  enough  to  act  ..." 

"What  girls  are  acting?"  she  asked  presently. 

"Oh,  /  don't  know,"  said  Eric. 

"There's  Theodore  Nevern,  anyway,"  said  the  persist- 
ent old  woman. 

But  this  she  said  to  the  back  of  his  head,  for  he  had 
lunged  away  from  her  and  was  making  for  the  empty 
library. 

He  might  be  angry  with  his  tiresome  relation,  but  what 
she  had  said,  coming,  as  it  did,  on  top  of  what  he  had  just 
learnt,  did  most  furiously  give  him  to  think!  So  this  was 
who  (and  what)  the  Young  Marlow  that  they  were  all 
making  so  much  of  at  Red  Alban  turned  out  to  be!  It  was 
with  this  nameless  offspring  of  a  shameful  and  shameless 
intrigue  that  Theo  Nevern  made  counterfeit  love  in  the 
traffic  of  the  stage;  went  for  walks  that  kept  her  late  for 
rehearsal;  spent,  he  was  sure  of  it,  most  of  her  time! 

His  anger  underwent  a  change.  He  had  been  angry  with 
David  before,  but  only  as  he  might  have  been  angry  with 
any  one  else  in  whom  she  chose  to  show  an  interest.  Now 
however,  a  new  element  had  entered  into  his  wrath  which 
not  only  changed  it,  but  caused  it  to  boil  up  afresh.  He  was 
the  vehicle  of  a  righteous,  a  justified  anger.  He  saw  David 
now  as  an  undesirable  —  some  one  whom  Theo  ought  to 
avoid,  with  whom  she  ought  not  to  be  thrown  into  contact, 
and,  above  all,  he  saw  him  as  one  who  ought  not  to  pre- 
sume to  approach  her. 

His  aunt  came  into  the  room,  and  —  exactly  as  Emma 
Blake  had  done  at  Red  Alban  —  took  a  book  from  a  table. 
But  she,  unlike  Miss  Blake,  was  to  find  what  she  wanted. 
He  heard  her  turning  over  the  pages. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  335 

"Yes,  here  it  is,"  she  said;  "just  as  I  thought." 

She  took  the  volume  across  to  him  and  bent  over  him 
as  he  read. 

"Yes,  born  the  year  after  we  heard  of  them  at  Hom- 
burg  —  quite  a  young  child,  you  see.  Not  a  word  of  this 
David  that  you  speak  of.  They  were  only  married  the  year 
Sir  Joseph  died." 

"I  wonder  if  Mrs.  Tarpalin  knows." 

"Oh,  of  course  she  knows.  They're  well-known  people, 
the  Penstephens.  Every  one  knew  at  the  time." 

"  I  wonder  if  he  knows." 
[    "Colonel  TarpaUn?" 

"No;  I  meant  the  chap  himself  —  this  David  Pen- 
stephen."  ' 

Lady  Harbington  gave  a  little  laugh  and  settled  her 
striped  linen  cuffs. 

"My  dear,  of  course  he  knows,"  she  said. 

And  that,  like  the  gentle  looks  and  the  good-breeding  of 
David's  mother,  which  had  been  held  to  make  her  conduct 
but  so  much  the  more  reprehensible,  did  very  naturally 
make  the  case  and  conduct  of  David  —  whom  Eric's 
cousin,  all  ignorant  of  what  he  concealed,  actually  met 
upon  equal  terms!  —  more  outrageous,  more  flagrant, 
still. 

"He  holds  up  his  head,"  Eric  Dunstable  thought  — 
"has  the  damned  cheek  to  hold  up  his  head!" 

This  David  certainly  did,  and  —  if,  on  our  knowledge  of 
him,  we  may  now  venture  to  predict  —  always  would  do. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

"The  more  one  thinks  of  it  .  .  ."  said  Eric  Dunstable  to 
himself  that  night,  and  "The  more  one  thinks  of  it  .  .  ." 
he  said  to  himself  when  he  woke  in  the  morning. 

The  long  dull  Sunday  at  White  Alban  did  not  help  to 
stop  his  thinking  or  to  soothe  him.  All  day  his  thoughts 
strayed  to  Red  Alban  where  Theo  was,  and  where  this 
David  Penstephen,  as  he  called  himself,  was  too.  It  was 
monstrous ;  a  scandalous  thing ;  intolerable  that  the  fellow 
should  go  about  unlabelled.  When  he  thought  of  Theo  ex- 
posed to  his  nearness,  he  set  his  teeth.  Harriet  Dunstable, 
who  was  an  old  fool  and  whom  he  had  never  known  to  be 
right  about  anything,  was  right  for  once  in  her  life.  The 
more,  yes,  the  more  one  thought  of  it.  .  .  ., 

He  came  back  and  came  back  to  a  phrase  the  very  in- 
completeness of  which  made  its  adequacy. 

He  went  to  church  in  Astonbury  with  his  aunt  and  her 
companion,  and,  going  and  coming,  heard  what  more  they 
had  to  tell  him  of  the  Penstephen  scandal,  as,  with  reten- 
tive memories,  they  were  able  to  recall  it.  He  may  have 
been  a  little  disappointed  to  hear  that  there  had  never 
existed  any  obstacle  to  the  marriage  of  David's  parents. 
That  shattered  his  first  conception  of  their  alliance  as  a 
vulgar  intrigue.  But  as  his  aunt  or  old  Harriet  pointed  out, 
Atheism  was  so  much  more  dreadful  than  any  other  plea 
or  motive  could  possibly  have  been. 

"Are  they  Atheists?" 

"  I  don't  know  whether  they  called  themselves  that.  All 
I  know  is  that  John  Penstephen  in  his  writings  —  which 
I  need  n't  say  I  never  read  —  denied  the  authority  of  Holy 
Scripture,  of  Divine  Revelation  generally.  I  remember  one 
phrase  which  I  did  read,  and  which  he  took,  most  incon- 
sistently as  I  thought,  from  the  Bible  itself  to  justify  the 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  337 

course  he  was  taking.  'Male  and  female  created  He  them.' 
He  actually  quoted  that  in  what  I  should  call  his  defence! 
Just  as  if  it  was  n't  because  we  are  males  and  females  that 
the  holy  ordinance  of  marriage  was  instituted." 

"It  was  all  disgraceful,"  contributed  Miss  Dunstable. 

"And  they  had  to  live  abroad." 

"Naturally,  nobody  could  know  them." 

"And  if  it  was  conviction,  why  did  they  marry  eventu- 
ally?" 

That  was  what  poor  Mary,  calm  now,  waiting  for  the 
blow  to  fall,  had  never  ceased  to  ask  herself.  Yet,  since 
marriage  had  been  a  concession  to  her  own  weakness,  she 
knew  only  too  well  why  they  had  married.  Lady  Harbing- 
ton  summed  up  the  case  against  her  unanswerably. 

"Shall  you  go?"  asked  Miss  Dunstable  now. 

"Go?  Go  where?" 

"To  these  theatricals?" 

"Why  not,  pray?" 

"I  thought  perhaps  you  would  feel  it  looked  like  coun- 
tenancing —  " 

There  was  the  silence  that  shewed  that  Miss  Dunstable, 
after  being  fairly  sensible,  had  said  something  silly. 

To  the  persons  at  Red  Alban  who  were  directly  or  indi- 
rectly concerned  in  the  fortunes  of  David,  the  break  which 
had  come  as  a  relief  in  the  rehearsals  was  all  too  short. 
More  than  ever  Frank  Tarpalin  regretted  having  asked 
Eric  Dunstable  to  act.  It  was  insufferable  that  David 
should  be  subjected  to  annoyance;  insufferable  —  David 
apart  —  that  what  had  been  designed  as  an  amusement 
should  be  turned  into  a  penance.  He  was  very  loth  to  have 
what  he  called  a  row  with  any  one  of  his  company,  but  by 
Monday  morning  he  had  quite  made  up  his  mind  that  if 
Dunstable  gave  them  any  more  of  his  nonsense,  Dunstable 
should  go.  He  knew  exactly  whose  the  fault  was,  but,  even 
to  spare  Theo,  he  could  not  allow  the  tension,  of  which 
every  one  was  so  painfully  conscious,  to  continue.  He  did 


338  DAVID   PENSTEPHEN 

not  speak  of  his  determination  to  his  mother,  who,  he 
knew,  would  have  tried  to  dissuade  him  from  taking  ac- 
tion, but  it  certainly  enabled  him  to  face  the  difficulties 
that  were  possibly  in  store  for  him. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin,  upon  her  part,  had,  though  he  did  not 
know  it,  come  to  a  like  decision.  She  had  decided  that  on 
the  least  provocation  she  would  herself  speak  to  Eric.  She 
did  not  share  her  son's  intention  of  telling  him  to  go.  She 
meant  to  take  him  aside  and  '  have  it  out  with  him.'  It  was 
clearly  useless  to  speak  to  the  privileged  Theo.  Mrs.  Tar- 
palin thought  she  could  be  trusted  to  manage  Eric  Dun- 
stable (much  as  she  disliked  him),  and,  on  this  assumption 
only,  felt  able,  like  the  exercised  Frank,  to  face  the  new 
day. 

David  woke  on  that  morning  with  the  feelings  of  a  boy 
who  has  enjoyed  an  exeat  and  has  to  go  back  to  school.  He 
was  really  suffering  very  considerably  by  reason  of  the  un- 
pleasant Dunstable's  animosity.  If  his  conscience  had  been 
quite  clear  as  to  his  own  share  in  what  he  believed  to  have 
caused  it,  he  would,  he  thought,  have  spoken,  himself,  to 
his  enemy.  It  would  have  been  quite  easy  to  ask  what  he 
had  done,  if  he  had  done  nothing.  A  few  reasonable  words 
to  him  could  not  have  failed  to  ease  the  situation  which  his 
hostility  had  brought  about.  But  there  was  Miss  Nevern, 
and  David  knew  only  too  well  what  his  offence  was.  He 
had  certainly  had  no  intention  to  offend;  but  he  had  done 
so,  and  he  understood  not  only  the  nature  of  the  offence 
he  had  given,  but  the  nature  of  the  feelings  it  had  aroused. 

He  could  not,  then,  make  any  appeal  to  Dunstable  for 
the  truce  during  rehearsals  which  would  have  been  so  un- 
speakable a  boon,  not  to  himself  alone,  but  to  every  one  else. 

As  he  dressed  he  foresaw  the  renewal  of  the  strain  under 
which  his  nerves  had  laboured,  and  he  did  not  look  for- 
ward to  the  hours  that  were  before  him  without  some  mis- 
giving. 

Miss  Nevern  joined  him  on  the  stairs  as  he  went  down  to 
breakfast.  She  had  some  violets  tucked  into  her  belt,  and 


I 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  339 

she  looked  as  fresh  as  the  sparkHng  morning,  and  as  gentle 
as  the  flowers  she  wore.  As  he  had  wondered  what  went  on 
behind  the  sullen  face  of  Eric  Dunstable,  so  now,  as  he  saw 
her,  he  wondered  suddenly  what  she  really  thought  and 
felt  about  everything  —  about  anything?  He  looked  back 
with  increasing  wonder  to  the  curious  nature  of  their  first 
meeting.  Never  since  then  had  their  relations  with  each 
other  touched  even  the  fringe  of  the  same  intimacy.  He 
could  perhaps  in  his  heart  be  glad  that  they  had  not  done 
so,  but  he  was  nevertheless  perplexed.  All  he  knew  was 
that  the  influence  of  Dunstable,  who  was  then  but  a  name 
to  him,  had  yet  been  over  the  strange  moments,  making 
them  more  strange,  and  in  some  odd  way  foreshadowing 
the  days  that  were  to  follow.  With  the  recollection  of  his 
first  impressions  of  her,  he  looked  at  Miss  Nevern  now. 
He,  it  was  probable,  was  an  open  book  to  her,  but  she  to 
him  was  secret,  veiled,  inscrutable.  What  went  on  behind 
the  soft,  shining  eyes? 

But  Theo  Nevern  was  destined  to  remain  a  mystery  to 
David.  For  him  she  was  to  be  Woman,  the  Eternal  Mys- 
tery. Afterwards  he  was  never  able  to  determine  what  mo- 
tives had  inspired  her  actions,  or  even  whether  she  had 
consciously  had  any  motives  for  some  of  them.  Was  she 
friend  or  foe?  Did  she  or  did  she  not  care  for  Eric  Dun- 
stable? Had  she  or  had  she  not  a  plan?  Was  her  way  with 
him,  David,  calculated  with  regard  to  Dunstable? 

As  if  to  silence  the  questions  he  did  not  ask,  she  took 
some  of  the  violets  from  her  belt  and  gave  them  to  him. 

He  took  her  offering,  nothing  doubting. 

So,  in  an  atmosphere  once  more  charged  with  electricity, 
the  company  assembled  to  the  first  rehearsal  of  the  new 
week. 

David  wore  Theo's  violets  —  a  dozen  of  them,  perhaps, 
—  thrust,  unfastened,  their  stalks  hanging,  into  his  but- 
tonhole. Theo  wore  their  brothers  and  sisters  —  a  couple 


34ol  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

of  score,  maybe,  with  a  few  leaves  —  at  her  waist.  A  di- 
vided bunch  of  violets  —  so  small  a  thing  to  have  so  dis- 
turbing a  power!  It  may  be  said  that  Eric  when  he  ar- 
rived saw  nothing  else ;  or  that  what  else  and  whom  else  he 
saw  —  from  the  music-room  itself,  with  its  furniture,  to 
Theo,  David,  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  Frank,  and  the  other  actors 
—  he  saw  only  in  the  light  of  that  broken  bunch.  There 
were  two  bunches;  there  was  one  bunch.  When  he  looked 
(without  looking)  from  David  to  Theo,  his  eye  ran  along  a 
violet  thread  looping  from  the  one  to  the  other.  When  he 
looked  (in  the  same  way)  from  Theo  to  David,  the  patch  of 
colour  which  he  had  left  at  her  waist  reappeared  glowing 
over  David's  left  breast.  The  two  were  thus  isolated  for 
him,  always,  from  the  others,  and,  wherever  they  were, 
close  or  even  apart,  linked,  bound,  entwined.  In  thought 
he  could  not  get  away  from  the  empurpled  strands.  As  the 
two  wearers  moved  they  were  everywhere,  crossing  you 
this  way  and  that,  like  floating  cobwebs  on  a  summer's 
evening,  in  the  flimsy  nothingnesses  of  which  you  entangle 
yourself  as  you  walk.  Or  the  purple  patches  —  red  was 
mingled  with  the  blue  for  him  —  flashed  messages  by  pur- 
ple rays  as  from  purple  lamps,  or  sent  or  received  them  by 
invisible  wires.  .  .  . 

The  rehearsal  proceeded.  Now  Mar  low  and  Hastings, 
the  friends,  were  together  on  the  stage;  now  Marlow  and 
Kate,  the  lovers.  Every  time  the  separated  violets  came 
near  to  each  other,  every  time  Marlow  and  Kate  touched, 
the  wretched  Eric  could  have  cried  out. 

Again  every  one  was  watching. 

"He  can  hardly  hold  himself,"  Lucy  Aylmer  whispered 
to  Emma  Blake. 

"You  know,  there'll  be  a  row,"  one  of  the  Astonbury 
men  said  to  Tony  Lumpkin. 

Frank  Tarpalin's  pencil  tapped  the  script  restlessly. 
Nothing  had  happened  that  he  could  'take  hold  of.'  He 
tapped  the  script  unconsciously,  but  as  one  who  ticks  off 
seconds. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  341 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  sighed  from  time  to  time.  Her  foot  moved 
much  in  the  same  way  as  the  stage-manager's  pencil.  Now 
and  then  she  changed  her  position.  A  Httle  rusthng  sound 
came  from  her  as  her  foot  tapped  a  footstool.  Her  face 
showed  no  strain  —  only  her  occasional  sighs  and  the  little 
movements  spoke  to  her  uneasiness.  Frank  spun  out  a  scene 
between  Hastings  and  Miss  Neville,  when  it  came.  Safety 
for  the  moment  was  reached  there.  Only  the  second  pair 
of  lovers  were  on  the  stage.  Respite  —  if  Theo,  who  was 
unconsciousness  itself,  should  not  chance  to  join  David  in 
the  audience.  .  .  . 

But  she  did  join  him. 

Now,  if  there  was  a  thing  that  David,  as  a  sensitive^ 
thoughtful,  and  understanding  actor,  never  did  do,  it  was 
to  talk  while  his  fellow-actors  were  acting.  Nothing  so  dis- 
turbing to  the  player  at  his  work  as  the  sound  (and  the 
sight)  of  conversation  in  progress  amongst  those  near 
enough  to  come  within  the  range  of  his  consciousness.  In 
the  theatre,  it  is  true,  there  can  seldom  be  silence.  Lucky 
at  rehearsals  if  there  be  not  hammerings,  or  at  least  the 
muffled  shaking  thuds  of  distant  hammerings!  There  is 
always  a  murmur.  But  the  stage  is  separated  as  by  a  gulf 
from  the  auditorium,  and  your  fellow-artists,  who  are  prob- 
ably seated  behind  you  or  on  one  side  of  you,  are  not,  as  in 
even  so  large  a  room  as  the  music-room  at  Red  Alban,  just 
under  your  nose. 

It  was  Theo  who  talked  —  actually,  so  far  as  Eric  Dun- 
stable was  concerned,  it  was  probably  the  violets!  David 
did  no  more  than  answer.  He  was  watching  the  scene  — 
appreciating,  indeed,  if  Dunstable  could  have  known  it, 
Dunstable's  easy  handling  of  it,  for  the  disagreeable  young 
man  was  a  very  clever  and  even  agreeable  actor.  There  was 
the  most  subdued  whisper  of  voices.  Frank  Tarpalin  be- 
came conscious  of  it  through  the  Hastings  on  the  stage  be- 
fore he  noted  it  with  his  ears  of  a  stage-manager. 

Hastings's  hands  were  moving  as  Frank  Tarpalin's  pen- 
cil had  been  moving;  as  Mrs.  Tarpalin's  foot  had  moved. 


342  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

His  body  as  he  stood  by  Miss  Neville  had  something  of 
rigidity.  The  ease  of  his  carriage  was  gone. 

"Take  that  a  little  quicker,  Miss  Neville,  and  come  a 
little  more  forward.  No,  that's  too  much.  There,  yes, 
that's  it  exactly.   Now,  again,  if  you  don't  mind." 

Frank  Tarpalin  looked  round  as  he  spoke,  the  script  and 
pencil  in  his  hand.  Theo  Nevern,  in  quite  a  harmless  mat- 
ter-of-fact way,  was  tidying-up  the  violets  in  David's  but- 
tonhole; collecting  their  straggling  stalks  together  and 
fastening  them  with  a  pin. 

"Isn't  that  better?"  he  heard  her  say;  and  he  heard 
David  say,  "Yes,  much  better,  probably.  Thank  you." 

Hastings  on  the  stage  did  not  look  in  their  direction. 
He  held  himself  stiffly  and  gave  the  cue  once  more.  But 
to  him,  above  the  subdued  murmur,  the  violets  seemed  to 
be  shouting.  A  moment  and  the  whole  room  would  be 
shouting.  What  would  it  be  exactly  that  would  precipitate 
the  commotion?  He  even  asked  himself  this,  conscious  of 
what  was  dangerous  in  himself. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin's  foot  began  to  move  again.  She  cleared 
her  throat  and  shifted  her  position.  Frank's  pencil  began 
to  tap.  The  others  as  before  —  all  except,  apparently,  Theo 
and  David  —  became  conscious  of  menace. 

Miss  Neville  spoke  her  speech  again.  Hastings  should 
have  answered. 

Theo  said  something  to  David. 

David  answered  with  a  whispered  monosyllable. 

Theo  whispered  again. 

David  shook  his  head  or  nodded. 

Theo  gave  a  little  laugh  —  aloud.  It  fell  on  a  dead 
silence. 

This  silence,  tense  as  the  silence  after  lightning,  while 
you  wait,  your  breath  held,  perhaps,  for  the  thunder  that 
will  crash  about  your  ears  and  deafen  you,  lasted  for  a 
moment. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  gave  a  little  gasp.  Frank  moved  forward 
a  step  or  two.  Eric  Dunstable,  his  face  livid,  had  stepped 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  343 

to  the  front  of  the  space  which  was  marked  off  from  the 
rest  of  the  room  as  the  stage. 

"It's  impossible,"  he  said,  hardly  able  to  articulate. 
"Impossible!  One  can't — "  He  looked  at  Frank.  "It's 
—  it 's  absolutely  impossible  —  a  bit  too  much."  He  looked 
at  David.  "Can't  you  stop  talking?  You,"  he  said,  "I 
mean  you,  Mr."  —  he  paused  and  looked  steadily  — 
"whatever  you  call  yourself." 

David  was  on  his  feet. 

"My  name's  Penstephen,"  he  said  quietly,  "if  you're 
speaking  to  me." 

"Is  it!" 

There  was  a  deadly  silence  for  a  moment,  in  which  some 
meaning  that  he  seemed  to  have,  and  that  was  not  clear  to 
David,  wrung  a  cry  from  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  and  jerked  a 
"Good  God!"  out  of  Frank,  who  then  sprang  to  him, 
clutching  him  by  the  arm,  shaking  him. 

"For  God's  sake,  man,"  David,  through  the  blood  drum- 
ming in  his  ears,  heard  him  say  huskily,  "for  God's  sake, 
remember  yourself ! ' ' 

But  Eric  for  the  time  being  had  lost  all  control  of  him- 
self, and,  through  the  Babel  of  voices  that  now  rose,  David 
to  his  bewilderment  heard  him  answer,  as  he  shook  off 
Frank's  arm,  "  I  know  what  I  'm  saying.  I  know  what  I  'm 
saying.  And  you  know  too.  As  much  right  — " 

Frank's  hand  was  over  his  mouth. 

What  was  it  he  was  trying  to  prevent  being  said?  What 
was  it  that  had  been  said?  David's  head  was  swimming. 
Everybody  seemed  to  be  speaking.  Theo,  very  white  but 
her  eyes  shining,  was  saying,  "Besides,  it  was  I  who  was 
talking,  not  Mr.  Penstephen.  And  I've  absolutely  done 
with  you,  Eric.  You're  making  an  exhibition  of  yourself. 
I  'm  ashamed  of  you." 

She,  too,  seemed  to  have  said  something  with  a  meaning 
for  such  as  should  understand.  She  was  trembling  and 
turned  to  where  David  had  been  standing.  But  David  was 
not  there. 


344  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

David  was  saying  to  Frank,  "Get  them  away,  will  you, 
or  let  us  go  out.   I  must  speak  to  Mr.  Dunstable  alone." 

"  I  'm  ready,"  Dunstable  said  to  David,  breathing  hard. 

"Shall  we  go,  then?"  said  David. 

But  Mrs.  Tarpalin  had  recovered  herself. 

"No,"  she  said,  very  quietly,  "I  won't  have  that." 

The  girls,  rather  huddled  together,  —  except  Theo,  who 
stood  apart,  —  were  listening  apprehensively. 

Theo  moved  suddenly,  and,  eluding  the  others  who 
stretched  out  their  hands  to  her,  slipped  from  the  room; 
but  not  before  she  had  given  David  a  long  clear  look  in 
which  many  things  seemed  to  be  struggling  for  expression. 
The  boys  and  the  young  men  from  Astonbury  were 
waiting,  ready  to  do  anything  that  might  be  required  of 
them. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  addressed  all  these  comprehensively. 
"Will  you  wait  for  us  here  for  a  few  minutes.  Eric,  will  you 
come  with  me,  and  Frank,  and  Mr.  Penstephen."  She  led 
the  way  from  the  room.  She  shut  the  door  when  they  had 
passed  out,  and  said  to  Eric  and  Frank,  "Will  you  go  to 
the  library." 

She  watched  them  go,  standing  quite  still,  her  hand  de- 
taining David  till  they  had  crossed  the  hall  and  the  library 
had  received  them.  She  drew  David  into  the  drawing-room. 
But  Theo  was  there.  She  was  standing  by  the  piano,  still 
trembling,  David  saw,  but  with  something  that  puzzled 
him  in  her  eyes.  She  did  not  speak,  but,  as  if  divining  Mrs. 
Tarpalin's  wishes,  slipped  out  of  this  room  also.  Then  Mrs. 
Tarpalin  turned  to  David. 

"I  want  you  not  to  come  to  the  library,"  she  said. 

"But  I  must  see  him,  Mrs.  Tarpalin." 

"I  want  you  not  to." 

"  I  must  know  what  he  meant.  I  don't  know  what  he 
meant." 

Mrs.  Tarpalin's  look  seemed  to  say,  "I  know  you  don't. 
I  know  you  don't." 

"Do  you  know  what  he  meant?"  David  said  suddenly. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  345 

Thus  challenged,  Mrs.  Tarpalin,  without  a  moment's 
hesitation,  answered:  — 

"Yes,  Mr.  Penstephen,  I  do." 

David's  face  grew  white. 

"Did  the  others  know?" 

"I  don't  think  so." 

"  Do  other  people  know  —  what  it  was  that  he  meant?  " 

"Some  must.   Frank  knew." 

"You  knew  when  you  asked  me  to  stay  here? " 

"Of  course  —  as  if  it  would  make  any  difference." 

"And  I  don't  know,"  said  David,  very  slowly.  "  I  'm  the 
one  all  the  time  who  does  n't  know." 

"Mr.  Penstephen,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin  desperately, 
"will  you  wait  for  me  here?" 

"I  must  see  him  afterwards." 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  shook  her  head. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "don't  you  see?" 

But  he  shook  his. 

"  I  'm  making  an  appeal  to  you,"  she  said  at  last.  "  If 
you  see  him,  you  '11  fight.  You  've  had  horrible  provoca- 
tion. I  —  I  'm  Frank's  mother,  and  I  should  even  wish 
you  to.  But  I  can't  have  it.  I  can't  have  it.  Oh,  my 
dear  boy,  if  you  knew  how  I  'm  on  your  side  —  how  we  all 
are.  I  am  unchristian  enough  to  wish  him  thrashed  as  he 
deserves.  But  I  just  can't  have  it.  Now,  will  you  wait 
here?" 

"Yes,  I'll  wait  here,"  said  David.  "But,"  he  added, 
"I  can't  promise  about  afterwards." 

" I'll  go  to  him,  then.  Shall  I  send  Frank  to  you? " 

"Yes,"  David  said,  " I '11  get  him  to  tell  me." 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  paused,  hesitating. 

"You  would  n't  rather  —  that  is,  you  don't  think  that 
you  ought  to  give  your  parents  the  opportunity  —  Oh,  I 
don't  know  how  to  say  this.  Ought  n't  they,  perhaps,  to 
be  consulted?" 

"  I  don't  think  so,"  David  said.  " If  it's  something  that 
other  people  know,  I  think  I  ought  to  know  it  too.", 


346  DAVID   PENSTEPHEN 

"Very  well,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin  after  a  further  pause. 
"I'll  send  Frank  to  you." 

David,  left  alone,  went  over  to  one  of  the  windows  and 
looked  out.  As  his  blood  cooled  down  he  felt  bewildered 
and  even  partly  stunned,  but  he  experienced  no  feelings  of 
surprise.  All  the  days  of  the  years  of  his  life  seemed  in  a 
way  to  have  been  leading  up  to  this  day.  There  had  always 
been  something,  and  now  he  was  to  know  what  the  some- 
thing was.  It  would  be  the  explanation,  he  knew,  of  all  that 
had  ever  happened  to  him  —  of  such  puzzlements  as  he 
only  dimly  remembered.  He  had  no  fear.  Everything 
hitherto  had  fitted  into  its  place  in  the  unconsidered  scheme 
of  his  life,  and  knowledge,  when  he  should  have  that  too, 
would  just  fit  into  its  place  like  the  rest.  He  still  itched  to 
fight  Dunstable,  because,  whatever  the  instrument  to  his 
hand,  Dunstable  had  used  it  like  a  cad;  but  in  his  heart  he 
knew  that  Dunstable  himself  had  but  been  used  as  an  in- 
strument, and  that  Dunstable's  own  quarrel  also  was  with 
Fate  and  not  man.  Meanwhile  he  felt  that  he  could  have 
done  anything  in  the  world  for  Mrs.  Tarpalin. 

What  was  happening  in  the  library?  The  minutes  passed. 
The  numbness  left  David,  and  left  him  restless.  He  re- 
hearsed again  and  again  the  extraordinary  scene  in  the 
music-room,  recalling  what  each  voice  had  said,  what  each 
speaker  had  looked  like.  He  recalled  the  silences  too.  He 
saw  the  huddle  of  the  three  girls.  Miss  Davenport,  playing 
Miss  Neville,  had  somehow  joined  Miss  Blake  and  Miss 
Aylmer,  though,  when  Dunstable  had  sprung  his  mine  upon 
the  startled  company,  she  had  been  on  the  stage  with  him. 
He  could  see  again  the  men  and  the  boys  exchanging 
glances.  He  could  hear  deep  breaths,  Dunstable's  tones 
were  clear  in  his  ears. 

"Whatever  you  call  yourself  ..."  And,  "  I  know  what 
I'm  saying"  (twice  spoken,  this);  "And"  (to  Frank) 
"you  know  too";  and  the  broken  sentence,  "about  as 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  347 

much  right — "  broken  there  by  Frank's  hand  over  his 
mouth.  ,  .  . 

And  for  background  the  calm  brown  room,  with  the  long 
windows,  so  like  the  long  windows  at  home.  Peace  behind 
storm.  He  thought  of  his  mother.  It  was  for  her,  he 
knew,  in  defence  of  her,  somehow,  that  he  tingled  to  plant 
his  fist  in  Dunstable's  insolent  face.  At  that,  with  a  sudden 
catching  of  the  breath,  he  thought  of  Theo  and  knew  that 
she  had  used  him. 

"One  could  strike  him  —  be  glad  to  see  him  struck  — 
in  the  face.   His  face  is  so  —  so  insolent  .  .  ."      %■ 

He  was  pulled  up  short,  and,  like  a  horse  dragged  to  his 
haunches  by  the  violence  of  a  wrench  at  the  bridle,  sway- 
ing, beating  the  air  for  lost  balance,  he  felt  the  world  swing 
dizzily  round  him. 

Yes,  Theo  had  used  him  for  her  own  purposes,  yet,  using 
him,  Theo  too  had  been  used.  She  no  less  than  Dunstable 
had  been  but  an  instrument  in  the  hands  that  choose  their 
instruments  blindly.  If  not  this  one,  then  another.  He, 
David,  was  to  come  by  knowledge.  This  way  or  that.  This 
way  or  that. 

So,  backwards  and  forwards,  backwards  and  forwards, 
his  mind  worked  as  he  waited. 

Yet,  when  Frank  came  to  him,  David,  outwardly,  at 
least,  was  the  calmer  of  the  two.  On  the  subject  of  Dun- 
stable it  was  Frank  who  found  it  difficult  to  contain  him- 
self. He  did  not  try,  indeed.  Words  exploded  on  his 
indignant  tongue.  "But  for  once,"  he  said,  when  he  had 
exhausted  his  vocabulary,  "  he 's  heard  the  truth  about  him- 
self, and  if  he  ever  comes  to  believe  it,  I  don't  envy  him." 

He  shut  his  lips  tightly.  It  was  his  hands  that  were 
twitching,  not  David's. 

"Never  mind  him,"  David  said.  " It  is  n't  about  him  I 
want  to  talk.  I  did  n't  know  what  he  meant  —  that's  my 
trouble.  I've  got  to,  Frank,  and  you've  got  to  tell  me." 


348  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"Oh,  he  did  n't  know  what  he  was  saying,"  Frank  said. 
"He  only  wanted  to  be  offensive.  You  were  sitting  next 
Theo— " 

"Yes,  yes,  but  I've  got  to  know,"  David  said.  "He 
implied  that  I  had  no  right  to  my  name." 

Frank  was  desperate  now. 

"Of  course  you've  a  right  to  it.  It's  your  parents' 
name,  is  n't  it?  I  tell  you,  he  was  mad.  He's  a  lunatic 
—  a  raving  lunatic,  as  well  as  a  swine  when  he  loses  his 
temper.  I  knew  we  should  have  rows.  Good  Lord,  what 
a  fool  I  was!" 

But  David  was  not  to  be  put  off. 

"Did  he  mean  that  my  parents  aren't  married?"  He 
faced  Frank  squarely.   "Are  n't  they  married?" 

"Yes,  they  are  married.  Of  course  they're  married.  Oh, 
why  do  you  go  on  like  this?" 

"They  are!"  Hope  returned  to  him.  "You  know  that 
they  are?" 

"Of  course  they  are.  I  could  shew  you.  You  could  see 
for  yourself." 

He  did  not  follow  this  up,  remembering. 

"Then,  what  did  he  mean?" 

As  David  himself  had  done  once,  long  ago  in  Battersea 
Park,  Frank  looked  for  a  way  of  escape. 

"Those  wretched  people  waiting! "  he  said.  "  I  must  tell 
them  this  rehearsal's  put  off  — " 

"Frank! "  David  put  out  his  hand. 

"Very  well,"  said  Frank.  "But  do,  do  forgive  us!  I'd 
give  a  year  of  my  life  that  this  should  n't  have  happened. 
I  don't  know  the  whole  story." 

Stumbling  and  fumbling  for  words  he  told  then  what  he 
knew. 

"There's  nothing  discreditable  in  it,"  he  said  as  he 
finished.  "It  was  quite  open  and  deliberate,  as  I  under- 
stand it.  A  question  of  views." 

Frank  was  thinking  that  he  would  never  forget  David's 
face.  It  was  the  face  of  some  one  listening  dispassionately 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  349 

but  very  intently.  He  did  not  seem  moved.  He  asked  a 
few  questions. 

Frank,  driven,  answered  as  he  was  able. 

Yes  or  No,  Yes  or  No,  as  the  case  might  be. 

"They  married  afterwards,"  he  said  at  last. 

"I  see.  After  I  was  born." 

David  considered  for  a  few  moments. 

"He  was  right,  then.  I  have  n't  any  particular  claim  to 
my  name." 

"Oh,"  Frank  said,  "you  made  me  tell  you." 

There  was  silence  then,  during  which  David  thought 
again,  and  Frank,  setting  his  teeth,  turned  to  the  window. 

Into  the  silence  came  the  sound  of  a  piano.  The  girls  in 
the  music-room  had  some  tact  and  sense.  Emma  Blake  was 
filling  in  the  pause  there  —  was  making  a  diversion.  It  was 
good  of  her.  She  was  a  silly  sort  of  a  girl,  but  she  was  being 
very  wise  now.  They  were  not  all  talking  about  David  and 
the  awful  'scene'  —  that  was  the  message  of  her  playing. 
He  wanted  to  look  round  to  see  if  David  perceived  it.  But 
David  was  standing  quite  still,  and  Frank  could  n't  look 
round. 

Emma  Blake  was  playing  Chopin  —  the  waltz  which 
Frank  knew  as  George  Sand's  Little  Dog  (surely  it  ought 
to  be  Kitten!)  Running  after  his  Tail.  Her  fingers  flew 
over  the  keys.  On  the  whole  she  played  very  few  wrong 
notes. 

Still  silence. 

What  was  keeping  his  mother  In  the  library?  What 
could  she  be  saying  to  Eric  that  he  had  not  said?  Not  that 
she  could  say  what  he  had  said !  She  had  only  to  tell  the 
fellow  what  she  thought  of  him,  and  to  ring  for  his  horse 
to  be  brought  round.  He  listened  for  the  sound  of  the  open- 
ing or  shutting  of  a  door,  but  he  did  not  hear  it.  He  could 
only  hear  the  piano  and,  paradoxically,  David's  silence. 

At  the  back  of  his  mind,  behind  his  preoccupation,  he  was 
trying  to  settle,  to  guess  even,  what  was  to  be  done.  Could 


350  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

the  theatricals  be  proceeded  with  at  all?  Eric  was  out  of 
them,  that  was  one  good  thing,  and  his  part  could  be  filled 
by  Diggory,  and  for  Diggory  some  one  would  easily  be 
found.  Theo,  Eric  once  gone,  would  no  longer  give  trouble. 
But  David?  Could  David  go  on?  Could  it  be  expected  of 
him  that  he  should? 

He  almost  started  when  David  spoke. 

"You  said  you  could  shew  me,"  David  said,  and  Frank 
felt  as  if  that  was  of  all  things  what  he  had  been  dreading 
most  to  hear  David  say. 

"Yes,  of  course,"  he  said,  but  he  did  not  move. 

"Now?"  said  David.  "Oh,  I  see.  Of  course  I  should  n't 
be  there." 

"It's  odd,  isn't  it,"  he  said  presently,  quite  without 
bitterness,  "that  I  should  never  have  looked  myself 
up." 

"It  shews  how  absolutely  unsnobbish  you  are,"  said 
Frank  gruffly. 

"I  don't  think  I  ever  thought  of  it,"  said  David. 

There  was  silence  again,  and  then  David  said:  "But  it 
would  give  the  date  of  the  marriage,  I  suppose?" 

"Oh,"  Frank  cried  explosively,  "ought  it  to  be  me? 
They  have  n't  told  you.  They  must  have  had  their  reasons 
for  not  telling  you." 

It  was  the  same  thought  as  Mrs.  Tarpalin's. 

But  David,  too,  had  another  thought,  which,  though  he 
did  not  know  it,  was  strangely  the  same  as  another  of  Mrs. 
Tarpalin's. 

"No,"  he  said,  "you're  wrong.  They've  been  hoping 
that  some  one  would  tell  me.  They  've  even  hoped  that  I 
knew.   I  have  only  to  look  back  to  know  that." 

His  voice  shook  for  the  first  time.  "I  know  now,  that 
I've  seen  my  mother  trying  to  tell  me." 

He  turned  away  and  walked  up  and  down  the  room. 

"There's  one  thing  you've  got  to  understand,"  he  said, 
struggling  now  to  keep  his  voice  steady.  "My  mother's 
not  —  not  to  —  to  blame.  She 's  good.   Nobody  ever  had 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  351 

sucli  a  mother.  Whatever  she  did  she  believed  to  be  right. 
No,  it's  more  than  that.  Whatever  she  did  was  right." 

Frank  groaned. 

"Oh,  my  dear  chap,"  he  said,  "as  if  I  thought — "  He 
turned  away.   "Oh,  damn  you,"  he  said. 

"All  right,"  said  David.  He  resumed  his  pacing.  He 
was  piecing  things  together  now. 

Betsy  and  her  Day  of  Rejoicing  .  .  .  Yes,  and  her  Cake, 
and  her  talk  of  cakes  .  .  .  Yes,  and  before  that  the  picnics, 
the  singings,  the  white  flowers.  And  the  packing  that  had 
been  quite  unlike  other  packings,  and  the  grey  dress  and 
something  about  pearl-coloured  gloves;  and  things  Betsy 
had  said,  lamentations  mingling  with  her  rejoicings;  di- 
rections, too,  that  she  had  given.  And  things  his  mother 
had  said  ...  at  the  station  .  .  .  something  about  always 
knowing  that  she  loved  them  —  they  were  always  to  know 
that  she  loved  them  —  and  something  in  the  way  she  had 
looked  at  them,  and  the  way  she  had  held  them.  And  some- 
thing (before  that)  in  the  way  Frau  Finkel  and  the  serv- 
ants had  waved  to  them  —  to  his  father  and  mother  — 
when  they  started  ... 

Oh,  he  knew.  He  had  no  need  of  books  to  help  him.  How 
clear  it  was.  How  easily  the  pieces  all  fitted  into  the  puzzle 
once  you  had  the  key. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I  believe  I  know  exactly  when.  What 
I  don't  know  yet  is  why." 

Poor  Frank,  who  had  thought  the  worst  was  over,  felt 
himself  grow  crimson.  At  the  sight  of  him  for  one  dreadful 
moment  David  doubted.  The  colour  mounted  to  his  own 
face,  and  ebbed,  leaving  it  white.  Then  he  gave  what  was 
almost  a  shout  of  relief. 

For,  as  on  the  evening  of  his  arrival,  across  the  long  years 
and  out  of  the  dimnesses  which  yet  were  not  so  dim  but 
that  he  could  pierce  them,  there  had  come  to  him  the  vi- 
sion of  Frau  Finkel,  Betsy,  and  the  waiting  telegram:  Frau 
Finkel  urging;  Betsy  going  on  with  her  work;  the  disputed 


352 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 


envelope  just  waiting.  This  time  the  vision  had  meaning. 
All  night  that  envelope,  its  contents  unknown,  had  lain  on 
the  nursery  mantelpiece  waiting  his  parents'  return. 

"They  didn't  know,"  he  said.  "They  were  married 
before  they  knew,  and  that's  all  that  matters." 

"Oh,  damn  you,"  Frank  said  again,  choking. 


CHAPTER   IX 

No,  on  that  memorable  day  when  they  had  set  out  so  mys- 
teriously from  Homburg,  they  had  not  known  (and  could 
not  have  anticipated)  the  change  that  was  imminent  in 
their  fortunes.  Two  lives  had  stood  then  between  them  and 
what  David  knew  indeed  to  have  been  as  uncoveted  as  it 
was  unforeseen.  The  injury  which  had  been  done  to  him  by 
the  belated  marriage  seemed  a  small  thing  beside  the  shame 
that  would  have  been  his  if  a  mere  change  in  their  fortunes 
had  been  enough  to  overthrow  the  beliefs  (or  unbeliefs)  by 
which  they  had  lived,  and  for  which  his  mother,  at  least, 
had  made  her  supreme  sacrifice.  But,  whatever  the  ex- 
planation of  their  marriage,  it  was  not  that.  The  conditions 
which  had  allowed  them  not  to  marry,  had  been  the  same 
conditions  which  had  allowed  them  to  marry.  So  much  was 
certain.  He  blessed  Frau  Finkel's  inquisitive  urgings  and 
Betsy's  dignified  obstinacy  which  had  caused  the  telegram 
to  remain  in  his  mind. 

And  David,  piecing,  piecing  together,  learnt  more  and 
more,  as  the  pattern  of  the  great  puzzle  which  was  his  life 
declared  itself.  And  as  he  pieced  and  pieced,  collecting, 
rejecting,  selecting,  discarding,  the  pattern,  whatever  the 
intricacies  of  its  whole  design,  began  to  show  more  and 
more  clearly  the  features  of  an  enshrined  portrait  —  the 
portrait  of  his  mother.  When  at  length  the  picture  stood 
revealed,  it  reminded  him,  the  many  galleries  he  had  seen 
in  the  days  of  the  wandering  giving  his  thoughts  colour 
and  form,  of  many  Madonnas,  many  of  the  chosen  Marys, 
with  or  without  the  divine  rays  which  he  (and  his  mother) 
knew  as  'Annunciations,'  but  always  with  the  haloes  that, 
by  the  same  association,  he  had  grown  to  think  of  as  the 
crowns  that  come  by  suffering. 


354  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

How  his  mother  had  suffered!  As,  by  the  light  of  his 
newly  gained  knowledge,  he  looked  back  over  the  half- 
remembered,  half-forgotten  days,  he  saw,  for  the  first  time, 
into  the  meaning  of  them  and  could  guess  how  she  had  suf- 
fered. The  light  turned  here  and  there,  probing,  searching. 
To  the  steady  ray  brought  thus  to  bear  upon  them,  all  the 
little  memories  and  impressions  of  his  childhood  yielded  up 
their  secrets,  —  each  secret  a  piece  to  fit  presently  into  its 
place  with  the  rest.  Nothing  that  had  happened  to  him  but 
was  seen  newly;  nor  was  it  the  keenness  of  the  searchlight 
only  that  made  the  shadows  look  so  black. 

So  he  searched  and  pieced,  searched  and  pieced,  and 
came  by  further  knowledge.  Everything  furnished  some- 
thing. Reconsidered,  many  a  fragment,  which  at  first  he 
had  rejected  as  useless,  or  which  he  had  discarded  as  super- 
fluous, found  its  billet.  What  unexpected  findings  were 
here !  What  surprising  dovetailings !  How  clear  the  emerg- 
ing significances  and  indications ! 

He  knew  now  why  his  mother  had  been  condemned  to 
the  nomad  life  —  she,  whose  instincts  and  activities  were 
all  domestic.  How  she  must  have  hated  it.  He  could  guess 
at  the  reasons  for  such  sudden  disintegrating  upheavals 
as  that  which  had  routed  them  all  out  of  Brussels  and  de- 
posited them  in  Homburg.  To  such  strikings  and  repitch- 
ings  of  the  tent,  her  life  must  cruelly  have  accustomed  her. 
When  he  thought  of  her  in  Cheyne  Walk  he  knew  how 
cruelly.  But  he  also  saw  (as  we  have  seen)  how,  longing  for 
a  home,  she  had  contrived  that  her  children  should  never 
know  what  they  lacked,  or  that  they  lacked  anything.  They 
had  lacked  nothing.  The  caravan  to  them  had  been  abiding 
as  any  house.  Memories  clung  for  them  —  for  David,  any- 
way, and  he  thought  he  could  have  answered  for  Georgina 
too  —  round  railway  carriages  with  their  wide  netted  racks 
like  mangers,  and  their  blue  or  grey  upholsterings,  and 
their  flapping  curtains  on  the  ivory  rings.  Carriage  was 
linked  to  carriage  by  a  feeling  of  which  the  holland-cov- 
ered  box,  perhaps,  was  the  outward  and  visible  sign,  and 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  355 

the  atmosphere  created  by  his  mother  certainly  the  inward 
and  spiritual  grace.  The  railway  carriages  were  just  rooms 
in  the  children's  great  home,  and  rooms  so  like  each  other 
that  to  them  they  were  the  same  rooms.  The  rooms  in  the 
hotels  and  the  lodging-houses  were  for  them  just  other 
rooms.  The  children  thus  had  a  big  delightful  home,  ever 
changing,  ever  the  same.  It  was  their  mother  only  who  had 
none.  Yet  her  suffering,  David  knew,  was  always  for  them. 

And  so,  gradually,  David  arrived  at  the  answer  even  to 
his  second  question.  He  knew  why  his  parents  had  not 
married;  he  knew  now  why  they  had. 

He  could  not  yet  think  quite  calmly  of  his  father.  How- 
ever willing  his  mother  might  have  been  to  make  her  sacri- 
fice upon  the  altar  of  his  and  her  own  beliefs,  he  should  not 
have  asked  it  of  her.  All  too  late  she  had  seen  the  impos- 
sibility of  the  conditions  she  had  accepted.  You  could  not 
live  outside  the  law.  Oh,  David  knew  why  the  tardy  mar- 
riage had  taken  place. 

And,  as  he  looked  at  the  enshrined  portrait,  it  told  him 
more.  It  had  the  sad  tranquil  outlook  which  was  his 
mother's  always  when  her  face  was  in  repose  —  which,  if 
he  had  known  it,  was  even  his  own.  But  her  eyes  had  not 
always  been  tranquil.  He  could  remember  them  with  al- 
most a  hunted  look  in  them.  They  had  worn  this  look  at 
the  time  of  the  arrival  in  England.  No  one  would  have 
supposed  that,  child  as  he  was,  he  could  have  noticed  it; 
but  he  had  noticed  it  and  he  had  remembered  it.  They  had 
worn  it  at  a  later  period  too.  And  there  was  another  look 
that  had  haunted  him  —  the  look  she  had  turned  on  him 
when  he  had  been  taken  in  to  see  her  after  Johnny  was 
born.  .  .  . 

In  her  extremity  she  had  been  trying  to  say  something 
to  him  then.  He  had  felt  its  purport  dimly;  he  knew  it  now. 

His  face  lit  up ;  was  illumined,  as  it  were,  from  within :  — 
Like  the  stone  which  the  builders  rejected  and  which  be- 
came the  head  stone  of  the  corner,  one  stubborn  piece 
which  had  baffled  him  again  and  again  fitted  smoothly  into 


356  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

its  place.  His  eyes  filled  with  sudden  tears.  Johnny  him- 
self had  been  as  unexpected  at  the  time  of  the  marriage  as 
the  passing  of  the  two  sound  lives  .  .  . 
It  was  the  ultimate  enlightenment. 

He  might  break  up  the  puzzle  now,  sweep  the  pieces 
together,  put  them  away  in  their  box.  They  could  yield 
him  nothing  more. 

Not  Mary  herself,  waiting  in  Cheyne  Walk,  could  have 
added  a  word  or  a  thought  to  the  telling  if  it  had  fallen  to 
her  —  though,  as  she  perceived  how  he  took  it,  she  might, 
for  the  pride  she  would  have  felt  in  him,  have  wished  that 
she  had  indeed  had  the  anguish  of  the  telling! 

For,  looking  into  his  heart,  as  she,  we  need  not  doubt, 
would  have  been  able  to  do,  she  would  have  seen  that  no 
bitterness  was  there,  nor  any  envy,  nor  any  repining.  His 
love  for  her  was  unshaken,  his  esteem  for  her,  his  trust  in 
her.  Even  for  the  brother  who  all  unwittingly  had  usurped 
the  birthright  that  should  have  been  his,  his  feelings  had 
undergone  no  change.  No,  David's  affections  had  stood 
the  great  test  on  all  counts  but  perhaps  one.  It  will  be  true 
of  him  to  say  that,  though  he  still  hurried  his  thoughts 
away  from  his  father,  he  was  glad  that  Johnny  was  there  — 
there,  for  his  own  sake;  there,  to  be  loved  as  he  loved  him; 
there,  especially,  maybe,  to  carry  on  the  name  which  he 
himself  had  indeed  no  right  to  bear.  / 


CHAPTER  X 

Descent  then  to  the  things  of  the  moment.  And  yet  not  so 
great  a  descent  either,  for,  if  the  things  of  the  moment  were 
trivial  in  themselves,  they  were  urgent  also,  and  there  were, 
as  Mrs.  Tarpalin  saw,  —  to  her  pride  in  the  guest  she  had 
come  well-nigh  to  love!  —  big  as  well  as  small  ways  of  deal- 
ing with  them.  All  was  well,  and  even  for  the  interrupted 
undertaking  all  was  to  be  well  also. 

She  knew  that,  as  soon  as  she  saw  David's  face.  After- 
wards she  always  spoke  of  it  as  'transfigured.'  It  was 
so,  anyway,  that  she  saw  it  when  she  came  back  to  the 
drawing-room. 

Her  own  face  was  tremulous.  She  had  had  a  curious 
experience  with  Dunstable. 

"He's  going,"  she  said,  and  paused.  "  I  wanted  you  not 
to  see  him,"  she  said  then,  coming  over  to  David  and  laying 
her  hand  on  his  arm.  "Now  I  want  to  know  if  you  will." 

She  did  not  say  what  had  passed  between  them.  With 
that  look  on  David's  face  there  was,  she  felt,  no  need. 

"Yes,  of  course  I  'II  see  him,"  David  said  without  hesita- 
tion. 

He  in  his  turn  was  always  to  remember  that  she  asked 
no  assurances  of  him. 

She  watched  him  go  from  the  room,  and  set  herself  to 
wait. 

She  went  over  to  the  fireplace  and  straightened  the  orna- 
ments on  the  mantelpiece.  Frank  had  disarranged  them, 
or  perhaps  even  David.  Frank,  it  was  probable.  Then  she 
sat  down  and  closed  her  eyes.  Five  minutes  passed;  ten. 
She  clasped  and  unclasped  her  hands.  She  was  listening 
acutely  for  sounds,  but  she  had  not  any  fear.  She  saw  from 
David's  look  when  he  came  back  that  everything  had  fallen 
out  as  she  had  expected. 


358  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "you  don't  need  that  I  should  tell  you 
what  I  feel,  or  what  I  think  of  you." 

But  David  had  something  to  say  that  must  be  said 
quickly.  Dunstable  had  asked  for  his  horse.  What  David 
had  to  say  must  be  said  and  answered  before  the  horse 
came  round. 

"Mrs.  TarpaHn,"  he  said,  a  Httle  breathlessly,  "do  you 
want  him  to  go?" 

"Indeed  I  do,"  was  on  her  tongue,  but  David's  look 
arrested  the  words  before  they  had  passed  her  lips. 

"You  did,"  David  was  saying;  "but  do  you  now?  If 
any  one  goes,  ought  n't  it  to  be  me?" 

"  I  'd  give  up  the  whole  thing  rather  than  that,"  she  said 
emphatically. 

"But  it  must  n't  be  given  up,"  David  said. 

"Well,  that  is  the  question,"  Mrs.  TarpaUn  said.  "I 
want  you  to  do  exactly  as  you  like.  Oh,  I  do  mean  this  in 
spite  of  what  I  myself  may  wish."  ; 

>     "The  play  must  n't  be  given  up,"  David  said  again. 

"  I  want  you  not  to  consider  us  at  all.  Please,  please  —  " 

"Then  I  think  it  would  even  be  easier  for  me,"  he  said. 

Her  eyes  questioned  his.  She  hoped  so  much  that  he 
would  not  go,  but  she  did  so  honestly  want  not  to  bias 
him. 

"Would  n't  you  like  time  to  think  it  over?" 

"  I  have  had  time,"  he  said. 

"Or  even  to  go  home  for  a  night?'* 

"No,"  he  said,  —  "unless  you  thought  it  would  be 
better?" 

"  I  'm  afraid  I  have  shewn  only  too  plainly  what  I  want," 
Mrs.  Tarpalin  said,  smiling,  "but  that  must  not  influence 
you." 

"  I  should  like  to  stay,  then,  and  see  the  thing  through," 
David  replied.  "But  I  should  like  more  than  that.  I  should 
like  things  as  far  as  possible  to  go  on  as  if  nothing  had 
happened." 

"They  will,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin.  "Of  course  they  will." 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  359 

"Yes,  but  Dunstable." 

"Do  you  mean  you  really  want  him  to  stay?" 

"You've  seen  him,"  David  said. 

"Oh,  I  'm  sorry  enough  for  him.  He's  abjectly  ashamed 
of  himself,  I  know  that.  I  quite  believe  that  his  tongue  ran 
away  with  him  —  ran  amok,  indeed.  But  that's  no  ex- 
cuse.  He  was  unspeakable.   He  behaved  like  a  cad." 

"He  says  that,"  David  said. 

There  was  what  seemed  to  be  a  long  pause,  and  time 
pressed.  David  chafed  a  little.  For,  with  a  clearness  that 
came  perhaps  of  the  stress  of  the  emotions  he  had  experi- 
enced, he  had  seen  that  for  every  one's  sake  the  going  of 
Dunstable  must  be  averted.  Dunstable  was  down.  It 
would  be  like  kicking  him  to  let  him  go.  He  did  not  think 
of  himself  unduly.  For  himself,  indeed,  he  did  not  greatly 
care,  but  he  did  care  very  greatly  for  the  honour  of  Red 
Alban,  which,  for  the  moment,  was  bound  up  with  his  own, 
and  he  saw  clearly  that  scandal  on  his  account  must  not 
attach  itself  to  these  theatricals. 

And,  behind  all  this,  a  strange  new  feeling  for  Dunstable 
himself,  who,  howsoever  indefensible  his  action  had  been, 
and  howsoever  little  claim  he  had  to  any  one's  considera- 
tion, had  done  him  the  service  which  even  his  mother  with 
all  her  love  for  him  —  though  of  her  very  love  for  him  — 
had  not  been  able  to  do  him.  By  Dunstable's  outrageous 
savagery,  David  stood  now  with  eyes  unbound;  fore- 
warned; forearmed;  equipped. 

"I  must  speak  to  Frank,"  Mrs.  Tarpalin  said  at  last. 
I    "But  it  will  be  too  late  then.   He'll  be  gone." 

"  I  '11  ask  him  to  put  off  going  for  five  minutes.  I  '11  find 
a  reason." 

She  came  back  to  say,  "  I'm  going  to  have  some  difficulty 
with  Frank  and  perhaps  every  one  else.    But  I  think  you 
are  right,  and  I  don't  care  whether  you  like  to  hear  it  or 
not,  I  think  you're  —  I  think  you're  — " 
^   She  could  not  say  it. 


36o  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

We  follow  the  lady. 

Dunstable  was  coming  out  of  the  library  as  she  left  the 
drawing-room. 

"Eric,  wait  a  minute,  please." 

She  gave  him  no  reason.  After  all,  if  she  failed,  she  could 
tell  him.  Indeed,  whether  she  failed  or  not,  she  was  deter- 
mined that  he  should  know  that  David  had  wished  him  to 
stay.  Sorry  as  she  reluctantly  was  for  him,  she  still  felt 
vindictive  if  David  did  not.  Dunstable  bent  his  head  in 
silence  and  went  back  to  the  library.  And  then  she  felt 
sorry  again. 

"But  it  will  do  him  all  the  good  in  the  world,"  she  said 
to  herself.  "If  he  comes  out  of  this  alive,  it  may  make  a 
gentleman  of  him  yet." 

She  had  reached  the  door  of  the  music-room.  She  opened 
it  and  went  in. 

"Frank,  I  want  you,"  she  said. 

Somebody  had  been  as  tactful  as  Emma  Blake  who  had 
played.  Cards  had  been  found.  The  waiting  company  were 
filling  up  the  time  with  a  little  mild  gambling. 

At  the  sight  of  their  occupation  she  changed  her  mind. 

Frank  had  come  toward  her. 

"No,"  she  said,  "  I  think  I  '11  put  it  to  you  all." 

Without  any  preliminaries  she  plunged  into  what  she 
had  come  to  say. 

They  heard  her  attentively. 

It  seemed  best  to  her,  even  in  the  presence  of  the  three 
young  girls,  to  couch  on  David's  history.  She  said  briefly 
that  his  parents  were  unorthodox,  and  that,  for  the  period 
which  had  unfortunately  covered  his  entrance  into  the 
world,  they  had  had  the  courage  of  opinions  which  they  had 
seen  good  to  modify  later.  Whether  they  had  been  justi- 
fied or  not  concerned  no  one  in  that  room.  What  did  con- 
cern them,  one  and  all,  was  the  terrible  use  that  had  been 
made  of  the  knowledge  by  some  one  whom  she  need  not 
name,  but  who  was  now  heartily  and  remorsefully  and  even 
pitiably  ashamed  of  himself. 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  361 

"So  he  ought  to  be,"  from  Frank,  under  his  breath. 
"My  God!  so  he  ought  to  be." 

"Yes,  Frank,  and  I  am  telling  you  that  he  is.  We  know 
that  control  of  his  temper  is  n't  his  strong  point.  We  may 
take  the  charitable  view,  I  think,  and  believe  that  for  the 
moment  he  was  n't  responsible.  Since  he  has  come  to  him- 
self he  has  made  Mr.  Penstephen  his  profound  apology. 
Now,  the  question  for  us  to  determine  is  whether  we  can  go 
on  with  our  play.  We  only  can,  I  think,  if  we  can  put  what 
has  happened  out  of  our  minds  altogether.  Can  we  do 
this?" 

"What  does  David  Penstephen  say?"  Frank  asked. 

When  they  heard  that  David  wished  the  play  to  pro- 
ceed there  was  a  sudden  burst  of  cheers  for  him. 

David  must  have  heard  it  from  the  drawing-room;  Dun- 
stable, even,  from  the  distant  library. 

"And  he'll  go  on  with  his  part? "  Frank  said.  He  turned 
to  the  rest  comprehensively.   "We  would  n't  unless." 

There  was  another  shout. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  faltered.  "Oh,  everybody  here,"  she 
said,  "if  I  ever  felt  proud  of  any  one  under  this  roof  .  .  . 
No,  I  know  I  can't  speak,  Frank,  but  if  I  could  I  should 
find  it  difficult  to  say  what  I  felt  for  him." 

"Oh,  Mother,"  Frank  said,  "and  you're  doing  it  so 
beautifully." 

There  was  a  shout  for  Mrs.  Tarpalin.  Every  one,  not 
the  girls  only,  seemed  to  be  trying  to  hold  her  dimpled 
hands. 

"But  wait,"  she  said,  "wait!  You  have  n't  heard.  You 
won't  like  it.   But  it  makes  it  ten  times  bigger." 

There  was  silence  when  David's  full  wish  became  known. 
Looks  were  exchanged. 

Emma  Blake  broke  the  silence. 

"It's  huge  of  him.    Oo,  absolutely  huge  of  him!" 

"It's  also  exactly  like  him,"  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin  quietly. 

"But  it's  out  of  the  question,"  said  Frank.  "Good 
Lord!   You  can't  wipe  things  out  like  that.    A  man  who 


362  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

would  do  what  Eric  Dunstable  did  is  n't  fit  to  know.  No, 
Mother,  it's  impossible."  He  turned  to  the  others.  "Isn't 
it?" 

There  was  not  a  voice  for  Dunstable.  The  room  was 
filled  with  clamour.  Every  thumb  was  down.  But  Mrs. 
Tarpalin  held  up  her  hand. 

"One  moment!"  she  said.  "Frank,  I  know  what  you 
feel,  I  know  what  we  all  feel.  If  I  followed  my  own  in- 
clinations I  should  n't  move  a  finger  to  stop  his  going  — 
though  I  think  I  should  be  wrong.  But  with  due  deference 
to  everybody,  there  is  only  one  person  whose  wishes  we 
have  to  consider,  and  that  is  Mr.  Penstephen." 

There  was  a  murmur  of  agreement  upon  that,  and  then 
again  silence. 

"But  can  we  bear  it?"  said  Frank. 

"  If  he  can.  And  after  all,  though  he  says  it  would  make 
things  easier  for  him,  he's  really  thinking  of  us." 

"If  it  did  that,"  said  Miss  Davenport,  and  struck  the 
right  note. 

Mrs.  Tarpalin  thought  it  might. 

"There's  Theo,"  said  Frank,  at  last. 

"Yes,  I  have  n't  forgotten  Theo.  But  before  I  speak  to 
her  I  want  to  know  what  you  all  feel.  If  we  go  on  it  must 
be  as  if  nothing  had  happened." 

"As  if"  —  she  turned  to  Frank  again  and  underlined 
every  word  —  "nothing,  do  you  understand  me,  had  hap- 
pened." 

Frank  fidgeted  and  looked  round. 

"I  think  Mrs,  Tarpalin 's  right,"  Welw^^n  said. 

Every  one  cordially  if  reluctantly  thought  so.  Frank  was 
the  last  to  assent. 

"  But  cheerfully?  "  said  Mrs.  Tarpalin.  "  Not  grudgingly 
as  of  necessity.  Cheerful  givers?" 

Cheerful. 

They  promised  her. 

But  in  the  end  it  was  David  who  carried  the  thing 
through,  for  he  it  was  who  tackled  Miss  Nevern  success- 


DAVID  PENSTEPHEN  363 

fully,  after  a  somewhat  heated  Mrs.  Tarpalin  had  failed 
with  her,  and  he  it  was  who  prevailed  with  the  shamed 
Dunstable. 

"I  can't  face  them,"  Dunstable  said.  "I  can't;  it's  no 
good." 

But  David,  linking  his  arm  through  his,  said,  "We'll 
face  them  together." 

So  the  rehearsals  were  resumed  and  peace  was  restored, 
or,  more  accurately,  where  no  peace  had  been,  peace  was 
established.  Even  the  inscrutable  Theo  was  amenable. 
But  she  was  to  remain  inscrutable.  If  her  wish  had  been 
to  rid  herself  of  Dunstable,  she  had  attained  her  wish  and 
more  than  her  wish.  For  it  was  David  now  who  seemed 
master  of  Dunstable's  jealous  heart.  The  sore  sullen  young 
man  followed  him  with  his  eyes  like  a  beaten  faithful  dog. 
And  Theo  seemed  satisfied. 

"You  shewed  me  Eric,"  we  may  suppose  ourselves  to 
hear  her  saying,  if  we  may  hazard  a  guess!  "You  shewed 
me  Eric,  and  freed  me." 

"You  shewed  me  Theo,"  we  may  suppose  Eric  Dunstable 
to  say  in  turn.  "You  shewed  me  Theo  and  freed  me." 

But  what  had  really  happened  was  that  between  them 
they  had  shewn  David  to  himself  and  freed  him. 

He  wrote  two  letters  that  night.  One  was  a  long  long 
happy  one  to  his  mother  in  Chelsea.  Everything  was  in  it 
that  could  make  glad  her  heart  —  everything  that  could 
ease  her,  solace  her,  make  up  to  her  for  past  suffering.  Love 
was  the  keynote  of  this  letter  —  love  and  understanding, 
and  undimmed  hope.  Nothing  more  than  the  truth. 

We  may  know  tiiat  it  made  Mary  happy. , 

The  other  letter  was  to  his  old  friend  of  the  shop. 

"You  said  that  when  the  time  came  you  could  help  me. 
Was  it  at  Margate  that  you  thought  I  stood  a  chance  of 
getting  the  training  I  should  want?  I  was  to  start  at  the 


364  DAVID  PENSTEPHEN 

bottom,  wasn't  I?  and  play  everything  —  be  General 
Utility  if  need  be  —  or  was  it  Call  Boy?  Well,  I  am  ready, 
and  not  afraid  of  work.  And  another  thing:  you  once  said 
that  you  wished  my  circumstances  made  it  necessary  that 
I  should  earn  my  own  living.  They  don't  quite  do  that, 
perhaps,  but  they  make  it  very  urgent  that  I  should  make 
—  try  at  least  to  make  —  some  sort  of  a  name  for  myself. 
And  I  swear  by  all  I  hold  sacred  —  or,  by  Skelt,  shall  I  say, 
of  the  Minories,  Redington  of  Hoxton,  and  Webb  of  Old 
Street,  St.  Luke's !  —  that  if  it  is  in  me  I  mean  to  do  that  or 
die.  I  don't  mean  to  give  in." 
That,  too,  was  true. 

And  here,  as  he  stands  on  the  threshold  of  a  new  life, 
but  a  life  that  has  its  foundations  firmly  cemented  in  the 
enduring  fabric  of  the  old,  we  may,  I  think,  in  all  hope  and 
confidence,  leave  him.  He  could  turn  an  enemy  into  a 
friend;  more,  in  very  truth,  perhaps,  like  the  oyster  of  his 
boyish  fancy,  make  pearls  of  the  grits  sent  to  wound  him. 
Why  not  a  great  pearl,  then,  of  the  great  grit  of  all?  A 
name  of  his  namelessness. 

The  way  at  least  was  open  to  him  now  to  the  land  of  his 
heart's  desire.  Not  his  mother,  even,  would  wish  to  hold 
him  back.  ... 

London,  1912-1014. 


THE  END 


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to-day  the  most  significant  of  our  novelists.  He  is  always 
sincere  and  he  is  always  worth  our  while.  .  .  .  '  Clark's 
Field'  is  packed  with  meaning."  —  JVew  York  Tribune. 

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O  PIONEERS! 


By  WILLA  SIBERT  GATHER 

"  A  great  romantic  novel,  written  with  striking  brilliancy 
and  power,  in  which  one  sees  emerge  a  new  country  and 
a  new  people.  .  .  .  Throughout  the  story  one  has  the  sense 
of  great  spaces;  of  the  soil  dominating  everything,  even 
the  human  drama  that  takes  place  upon  it ;  renewing  it- 
self while  the  generations  come  and  pass  away." 

McClure's  Magazine. 

"  The  book  is  big  in  its  conception  and  strikes  many 
great  live  topics  of  the  day  —  the  feminist  movement  and 
the  back-to-the-soil  doctrines  being  two  of  the  most  con- 
spicuous. There  is  a  spirit  of  the  open  spaces  about  this 
story  —  a  bigness  that  suggests  that  Miss  Gather  has  taken 
more  than  her  title  from  Whitman's  hymn  to  progress, 
'Pioneers,  O  Pioneers.'"  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 


With  frontispiece  in  color. 

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THE  STREET  OF  SEVEN  STARS 
By  Mary  Roberts  Rinehart 

A  story  of  two  young  lovers — students  in  far-away 
Vienna  —  and  their  struggle  with  poverty  and  tempta- 
tion. Incidentally,  a  graphic  picture  of  life  in  the 
war-worn  city  of  the  Hapsburgs. 

From  Letters  to  the  Author: 

"  Fresh  and  clean  and  sweet  —  a  story  which  makes 
one  feel  the  better  for  having  read  it  and  wish  that  he 
could  know  all  of  your  dear  characters."  —  California. 

"Little  that  has  been  written  in  the  last  decade  has 
given  me  such  pleasure,  and  nothing  has  moved  me  to  pen 
to  an  author  a  word  of  praise  until  to-day."  —  Utah. 

"  '  The  Street  of  Seven  Stars '  will  be  read  fifty  years 
from  now,  and  will  still  be  helping  people  to  be  braver  and 
better."  — "New  York. 

"  It  stands  far  above  any  recent  fiction  I  have  read." 
—  Massachusetts. 

"  Quite  the  best  thing  you  have  ever  written."  —  Connec- 
ticut. 

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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


tt£C^  U^-^*^' 


JUN     41981 


Form  L9— Series  444 


^ 


3   1158  00690  9120 


'VER. 


IliSinnliS  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  376  610 


